


Come Back to Me, Baby

by truelovetakesawhile



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Abuse, Drowning, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Keith (Voltron) Angst, Keith (Voltron) Whump, Keith dies a lot, M/M, Suicide Attempt, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:48:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21698002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/truelovetakesawhile/pseuds/truelovetakesawhile
Summary: All Galra have nine lives, if there are enough pieces of them left to revive after death.Keith doesn't understand what's happening to him.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 189
Kudos: 604





	1. Grave

All Galra have nine lives.

_Most_ Galra have nine lives.

If there are enough pieces of you left to fix, if the conditions are just right, you’ll wake with a terrible headache to start your long recovery. It’s why the Galra Empire has been so successful. It’s why they’ve grown clever in the _creative_ ways they use to kill their enemies.

Toss someone out an airlock, or set off an explosion—there’s no coming back from that. A little stab to the heart and your enemy might survive to return and kill you another day. 

It’s ineffective, unless you’re trying to kill someone slow.

Most Galra know how many lives they have left. It helps them pretend they aren’t afraid that, eventually, they’re going to run out.

ONE

There was something in the air that burned when he breathed it in, choking it down, but he _needed_ to breathe, and he was desperate for oxygen.

_In_ and it felt like little blades scraped down his throat, burrowing in his chest. 

_Out_ and he tried not to cough because it would take too many long minutes of gasping to steady his breath afterward.

When he tried to open his eyes, it felt like a hand pressed down on them, keeping his eyelids shut tight. Something heavy weighed against his legs and when he shifted them, wood creaked and metal clanked. There were voices in the distance.

_What a terrible dream._

He struggled again to open his eyes because the light beyond them meant his father would be home. Technically, he shouldn’t have been left at home alone for so long, but they both knew he could handle himself. Even at ten years old, even if his dad usually took away the sharp knife he always wanted to carry around with him. His father would tuck him into bed and apologize for leaving. He’d always promise to be back in the morning.

_“By the time you open your eyes, I’ll be downstairs making breakfast. It’ll feel like I never even left.”_

He knew his father had been trying to change his hours at work for years, but emergencies didn’t only happen in the daylight. Someone always needed to be waiting, ready to save those who couldn’t help themselves. His dad was kind of like a superhero, one who had dark circles under his eyes and wore a sleepy smile while he made misshapen pancakes.

When he finally fought and _won_ and his eyes opened, the first thing he saw was the darkness. Disappointment clawed in his chest. Though he wasn’t really afraid of the dark, it left a sour taste in his mouth. Waking up at night meant loneliness and huddling under the blankets piled on his bed. It meant there was no one else in the empty, echoing house, even if there’d been a nightmare clinging to him after his father left. Even if his circling thoughts began to hurt.

It was dark around him, and it was night, but it was too _bright_ all at once. There were weird shadows playing on the wall of his room—a wall that itself looked warped, as if ready to collapse at any moment. Kicking his legs again, he glanced down at the shattered wood dusting his pajamas.

Had something fallen from the ceiling?

There were lights coming in through the windows, spotlights tinged with red and blue. The unnatural brightness.

“Clear!” he heard someone shout down the hall.

“Dad?” he tried to say, but he felt like he was being smothered and once his lips parted the coughing started again, the kind that made him afraid he’d never remember how to breathe.

When he curled his hand in his blanket, something crunched beneath his fingers. In the spotlight he could see his skin smeared with crumbling black and white. Sometimes the same stuff clung to his father when he came home after a long, bad night, smudged around his jaw, lining the creases around his eyes.

It felt too hard to sit up, to move.

The voices grew louder, shouting, but not with anger. They bled the same desperation his father had, the one time they’d been separated in the mall, or when he’d broken an arm trying to jump off of a too-tall fence. 

But he didn’t recognize these voices. He didn’t hear his father.

There was a _bang_ and crunching wood, before his bedroom door collapsed inward. The figure standing there was tall and misshapen, dark and serious.

“Dad?” he tried to say again, but the word had been scorched away from him and he already knew this stranger wasn’t his father.

“. . . Keith?” the stranger said, without wasting a moment to try to listen to the ineffectual rattle coming from Keith’s throat. Then the stranger was at his bedside, checking him over, making sure all of the parts of him were still where they were meant to be. He called out over his shoulder. “I found him. He’s alive! _I found him._ Have medical ready. He’s still breathing.”

The stranger was dressed like a firefighter, and wasn’t his father, and had no reason to be in his house in the middle of the night.

“You’re a miracle, kid. I just need you to hang in there a little while longer for me,” the stranger said, carefully lifting Keith off the bed. His breathing stuttered for a long moment, and all he could think of were flames.

Had there been a fire? Had something burned?

That didn’t make any sense. His father left every night because the fires were elsewhere.

They moved and Keith’s vision blurred because they were shifting too fast, and he couldn’t breathe—

_“The smoke will kill you faster than the flames, Keith.”_

“Close your eyes. Keith, can you do that for me?” the stranger asked, but Keith wasn’t a kid who was very good at following directions. He hated to be told what to do, if it wasn’t his own father giving the orders, so his blurry eyes swept over charred walls and singed carpeting and melted picture frames.

The stranger was fast, as if convinced that Keith might not last much longer, but not quite fast enough.

Keith saw the long, black bag laid out in what was left of the foyer, zipped up tight.


	2. Coffin

“You break curfew, you don’t get to come back inside until morning.”

“But—”

It didn’t matter that he didn’t know what he was going to say, because the door slammed in his face. Keith ignored the raised voices that were still bleeding out from the locked-tight house. He ignored the tight hunger in his stomach. Usually he could at least eat at school, but someone had thought it would be funny, _again_ , to smack his tray off the edge of the table and onto the ground. Keith had clenched his fists and ground his teeth, storming out of the room because he had some pride left. No matter that his mouth still watered from an almost-meal and his head swam dizzyingly, thoughts puffed into see-through clouds that would pull apart if he focused on them for too long.

Keith sat down on the front porch and he felt very alone.

It had only been a little over a year since his father ran into their already-burning house, trying to save Keith. A little over a year since Keith had somehow survived and his father did not. There had been five foster homes, three schools, and countless bruises since then. There were days when he learned not to show when he was afraid, or when he wanted to cry, or if someone was hurting him, because then it would only get worse.

He could handle it. He _was_ handling it. There were only a few hours until morning. It could have been worse.

Sometimes he wondered how his father had felt, getting the call at the firehouse. Realizing that the address was his own, and Keith was a heavy sleeper, because he knew if he woke up in the middle of the night there wouldn’t be anyone home but him.

He wondered what his father had been thinking, if he’d thought he would be joining Keith instead of leaving him alone, when he died.

“It’s Keith!” the call echoed down the unquiet street. The sun had set, the streetlights were coming on, and there was a group of boys stalking up the middle of the asphalt.

_Keith_ was what they called him when they were feeling nice. There were so many other words they could use to convey how much they hated him. Sometimes he knew that they only kept at him because he refused to back down without a fight. Sometimes he knew things would be easier if he’d just lower his fists and let them hit him a while. Then it wouldn’t be _fun_ for them anymore.

They only hated him because he was different, and he tried not to be afraid.

Shoving his hands into his pockets so they wouldn’t ball into fists, he stood on the front porch. He couldn’t call it his, because it belonged to the foster family who’d agreed to take in a _trouble child_. There wasn’t much of anything that was his anymore.

“What are you doing out here, freak?” one of the boys, tall with a sneer, paused on the sidewalk. He was smart enough to keep his voice down; there were always neighbors who could be listening, and even these boys knew not to annoy Keith’s foster parents.

Keith decided not to say anything.

“Finally get kicked out?” another boy asked.

“They realized dogs shouldn’t get to sleep inside?”

“They didn’t want you anymore?” “No one wants you here!” “Why don’t you just leave?” “Why aren’t you saying anything? Are you a coward?”

“Not even your real parents wanted to keep you around,” the first boy said, and that sneer turned slick with triumph when Keith ground his teeth together.

Sometimes he remembered that it wasn’t fair. His father shouldn’t have died. His mother shouldn’t have left them. There should have been someone else in his life who could have reached out to help him before he’d been dragged into the system. Thinking like that was a waste of time. Nothing could change the past. He was the only one who could decide his future.

The boys were coming closer to the porch steps, so Keith hopped down them and started walking down the street. As he’d predicted, the boys followed. It was both a relief and a risk. If he could bring them farther away, there was no chance they’d bother his foster family. He didn’t need them angry enough to extend this little round of exile.

“You scared, Keith?”

But away from that slim farce at adult supervision, the boys could be worse.

“Did you finally decide to run, Keith?”

“Run, Keith!”

“ _Run, run, run!_ ”

The footsteps behind him cracked against the cement so Keith ran, scuffed shoes digging into the pavement. He craved speed, but not like this, with his heart pounding and question marks filling his mind because he didn’t know what they’d do to him if they caught him, this time. There might only be a few bruises, if they had to get home early. A little blood, if the boys were really bored.

Keith was quick, though. Maybe that was why they were always coming after him; sometimes he managed to get away.

The street teemed with shadows and streetlights flickered on overhead, little puddles of gold that hardly poked at the growing darkness. Houses slumped on either side of him, with cars out front that tried to hide their rust and families inside that probably weren’t much better off than the one he lived with. Wind pulled at unkempt lawns and Keith’s hair, too long now because he was afraid—no, not afraid, just cautious of letting anyone get too close to him with a pair of scissors.

The boys stopped trying to be quiet, so their shouts and laughter tangled with the night air.

Keith cut off to the right, through a yard and into the trees. The darkness was deeper there, thick enough to trip into, but he knew where he was going. His feet found the path and he was gone, running, _gone_.

But they were still behind him.

Leaves crunched beneath those old shoes and twigs scratched at his arms. Ahead, there was the sweet rush of water, which did nothing to calm the heat within his chest. It ached, his lungs heaved, as if something had stabbed him.

Calls of “This way!” and “I see him!” followed him down toward the water, and it didn’t matter. He was faster; he was smarter. He could—

Something collided with the backs of his knees so Keith went down, _hard_ , crashing into the embankment, the twigs and mud and little stones, until his cheek came to rest near the rush of water.

“It’s rude to leave when someone’s talking to you.” There were knees pressed into his back, pinning him down, and then a rush of voices around him as the other boys caught up. They lingered in the trees, like they were waiting.

Keith wasn’t sure who was the first to kick him, but it was almost a light tap and didn’t hurt much. That came later.

They screamed at him, because they had so much rage and only him to take it out on, and when he tried to fight back they only grew worse. He bloodied someone’s lip; they twisted his arm behind his back so he couldn’t cover his face while they retaliated. 

“Teach him a lesson,” someone said, or they all decided, and then his old shoes were being soaked through as they shoved him into the water. Swinging a leg, he managed to trip one of the boys, sending him crashing down. The creek wasn’t deep and the current wasn’t very strong. 

But there were too many of them, and Keith was alone.

“Keep him down,” one of the boys advised, while another said, “Keep him quiet.”

Keith wasn’t sure what they wanted from him. Maybe they wanted him to hate himself; maybe it wasn’t enough to see that he hated his _life_.

The older boy grabbed Keith’s shirt in both hands and dragged him beneath the current. It was oversized, some charitable donation. Nothing he wore truly belonged to him anymore; nearly all of his possessions had been lost in the fire.

It felt a little ironic then, when his head dragged beneath the water and he couldn’t breathe.

Moonlight flickered silver off of the creek’s surface overhead and when Keith blinked it looked orange and red, like flames. He lifted his neck and squirmed, searching for leverage; the boys would usually let him up just to see if he would beg, or try to run again. They liked to make it cruel.

But when he struggled against the hands pressing him down into the mud, they didn’t let go.

His heels scrabbled for purchase against the bottom of the creek but with all that weight against him, it was hard to move. The water was darker, it was harder to see, as silt stirred up by his struggling drifted across his vision. His chest hurt again, but not a good pain like it was when he ran. This was the kind that led to panic.

Keith shoved at the hands on him but there were other hands to hold his arms down. There were muffled voices filtering through the water’s surface but the distance jumbled all of the words together incomprehensibly. That moonlight flickered and Keith opened his mouth—maybe to scream. Or . . . beg. He wasn’t sure and it didn’t matter because there was only a string of bubbles escaping to the surface and he couldn’t _breathe_ until, inevitably, he did, and the water rushed in.

It hurt. Drowning wasn’t quiet or slow. It certainly brought him no peace. Keith screamed with the need for air and choked on the water in his lungs and the current above him flickered _silver white orange red_ and the boys were laughing and everything hurt it _hurt it hurt and_ no one would come looking for him this time no one would come calling his name and it ended like that alone and cold and _scared he was scared but he was never supposed to show it_ before the colors left him and everything faded to black.

The first thing that greeted him was his heartbeat.

Next he realized he was breathing sweet, wonderful, glorious _air_.

Keith gasped for it, arms trembling as he tried to pull himself further up the bank. The trees were quiet around him; the boys were gone. It was strange, that they’d managed to leave without him hearing. Maybe they’d been satisfied because they’d finally managed to scare him. For a minute, Keith had been convinced this was where he would die. One of them must have pulled him out of the water at the last minute; his thoughts were still garbled, the moments cluttered together.

He coughed, chest aching, and let his head rest against the mud another moment.

He could have died. Keith wondered if that meant he would have seen his father again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't worry friends it's going to get worse before it'll get better.
> 
> a little hint for the next chapter, keith uses up three of his lives before even leaving Earth. oops?
> 
> let me know what you think! see you in two weeks!
> 
> Find me over on [tumblr](http://imreadingabook.tumblr.com)!


	3. Headstone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, all. I know none of these chapters are particularly happy, but this is where a lot of the tags start to come in. please be mindful and take care of yourself, and feel free to skip this chapter if mentions of suicide will negatively affect you. I promise you won't miss anything and I would prefer that you take care of yourself. I don't condone keith's actions here, and if you find yourself in a similar headspace, please reach out to someone you know, someone online, or both. talk to me if that will help.

It had been a little over four years since he’d lost his father. Keith was fifteen. He was training to become a pilot for the Galaxy Garrison. This would be the last day of his life.

The thought didn’t sit as well as it should have. There had been a lot of good over the past year—a lot of good that he wasn’t sure he truly deserved. 

It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. At least, he tried to tell himself that because he couldn’t take it anymore.

He couldn’t go on like this, even though things had once been so much worse, and that was part of what made him most ashamed. It was hard rolling out of bed every morning, because if he didn’t rise before most of his classmates Keith knew he wouldn’t get up at all. There was an anxiety roiling beneath his skin, the kind that made it impossible to sit still, while at the same time every piece of him felt so _heavy_ , like it was too much effort to even move his feet. Like he’d prefer to spend days and days in bed because laying there with his eyes closed at least let him pretend he could stop thinking for a moment. The push and pull of that movement and stillness within him made Keith angry—well, angrier than he’d already always been. He couldn’t take it. He couldn’t—he couldn’t do this.

The Galaxy Garrison didn’t even want him there. He’d _never_ go back to another foster home. There was no one out there in the world waiting for him; his father was gone and his mother . . . She was gone, too.

The only reason Keith had anything at all was because of Shiro.

The only good thing Keith could really do for Shiro meant . . . going away. Then he wouldn’t need to worry about looking out for some dumb kid anymore—sticking out his neck and risking his career for someone the higher-ranking officers were always insisting would amount to nothing. Everything would have been better for Shiro’s career, his success, if he hadn’t been saddled with some stupid, angry kid.

On good days, Keith remembered that wasn’t true. He remembered that Shiro was almost his brother. They looked out for each other. They _listened_ to each other, and Shiro would have listened, but—

The good days weren’t so often, anymore, and Keith wasn’t going to wait around when he knew this was something that wasn’t going to fix itself. Really, it would just end up hurting Shiro more, the longer he stayed. Keith knew how disappointed Shiro would be, if he could have seen him but—but no, that was wrong. Shiro would be scared, and sad because he would feel like this was partially his fault, so then he would end up blaming Keith—

No, that wasn’t right either. Shiro was too good for that, and that was part of the problem, and Keith was just so _tired_ of struggling to parse through his thoughts to find what was real.

He’d saved a bottle of pills from one of his accidents—maybe when he’d been thrown off his hoverbike and broke his arm.

It felt so _final_ and he hoped his dad would forgive him, and that Shiro would be alright. It would probably take him a little while to see it was for the best, because sometimes Shiro was too kind for his own good.

Keith pulled in a breath, ignoring the shaking in his hand that made the pills rattle around in their bottle. One choice, and then it was over. He wouldn’t have to be afraid again. Things were good with Shiro, but they couldn’t be that way forever. That meant Keith didn’t know what would come next and that unknown—the thought that it might be worse—made him want to curl into a ball. Hide, like he used to in the foster homes, when nothing else would save him.

He knew this was just a new way to hide.

Popping off the cap, he slipped the pills one by one onto his tongue. There had been so many other ways he’d considered—shied away from—over the last few months. This was what he’d settled on, because it might hurt Shiro the least. It meant someone else might find him instead. Less messy. Less startling. No blood, just an ending.

Keith filled a glass of water at the sink and for a moment, while he drank it down, felt a flicker of doubt. His cellphone sat on the counter. They would miss him in class soon, but Shiro would be busy all day and Keith skipped so often no one would be in to check on him for hours.

They’d be angry, when they came to find him. They’d be angry, when they found him.

He left his phone on the counter and sat on the floor.

And the

DARKNESS

dragged 

him 

down

and it took so much longer to die

than

he’d

imagined.

“. . . Keith?”

The doorknob rattled overhead. Keith’s stomach ached, in a terrible way it hadn’t since he’d been sick with some stomach bug as a kid. His head pounded, heart thundering in his chest. _Alive, alive._

There was no reason he should be alive.

When he could open his eyes, gaze oddly focused from how he’d sprawled out across the bathroom floor, he thought maybe he’d thrown up before he’d passed out. Gotten it all out of his system, somehow. But the floor was clean—well, as clean as it could be for a teenager’s military dorm room.

“If you don’t answer me, I’m breaking down this door,” Shiro threatened.

_Shiro_.

“I’m coming,” Keith said and his voice sounded oddly steady for someone who shouldn’t have been there. He shouldn’t have been alive. How was he alive?

The effort it took to pull himself off the ground was excruciating. For a moment he felt that weakness—that temptation to stay there where he was, immobile and indifferent—but Shiro was waiting for him. Guilt unsettled Keith’s stomach even further.

Shiro should have, _would have_ , been breaking down that door, to find . . . to find . . . _Keith_.

When he pulled open the bathroom door he could see the worry trying to hide in Shiro’s eyes.

“What were you doing in there? I heard you weren’t in class today. I came as soon as I could,” Shiro said, brow furrowing as he looked down at Keith’s rumpled clothes.

Keith hadn’t felt so many hours slip away from him. How had he lost so much time? _How was he still here?_

“Shiro,” Keith started, then hesitated. When he stepped forward, he couldn’t look into those concerned eyes anymore. All it made him feel was guilt, and shame, and—still, that urge to slip away. Quieter but not gone.

When he hugged Shiro too tightly, he could feel his almost-brother’s surprise. Keith argued and fought and blustered; he didn’t do . . . _this_ , whatever this was.

But Keith was afraid. 

He didn’t want to end up in this place again, alone in the bathroom with only a pill bottle and a lot of desperation.

“Shiro, I need help,” Keith said, holding his brother tightly, as if only that grasp could keep them together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a third of keith's lives are gone, he hasn't left Earth yet, and he doesn't even realize that he keeps dying. next chapter takes us to space, finally. let me know what you think of this chapter/what your theories are for what'll happen next!
> 
> see you in two weeks!
> 
> Find me over on [tumblr](http://imreadingabook.tumblr.com)!


	4. Internment

It wasn’t calm.

Nothing in space ever was. Usually Keith preferred it that way; it gave him less time to think. Things had been worse, when he’d first ended up here. There. On a ship. In a lion. Defending the universe. Space didn’t have the medication he’d started taking, after he’d finally asked Shiro for help. Space was constantly trying to kill them, which would strain anyone’s mental health.

It wasn’t quiet.

Not like on Earth, where there was only Keith, and sometimes Shiro. In space there was a lot of yelling. There were a lot of bad jokes. There was Pidge’s constant nonsensical chatter and Hunk’s whistling while he wrestled with a new recipe in the kitchen. Coran’s ridiculous stories. Allura’s lectures. Shiro and _Patience yields focus_ and . . . Lance. Lance was loud.

Lance was screaming in his ear, because Keith hadn’t shut his comms off, yet.

Not yet.

Only a few more seconds. Maybe it was selfish of him, to want to hear a little while longer. To feel less—less alone.

Keith was scared.

He’d always known it would end badly, and he’d always known that pessimism was partly due to years of unresolved underlying _issues_ , but he hadn’t known it would be like this.

Just when he was starting to understand himself.

Just when he was starting to know who he was. Letting himself _want_ something, for the first time in years, that felt like—

Like Allura apologizing for ever doubting him because of his heritage.

Like Coran helping him find a combination of alien medicines that kept the worst days away.

Like Shiro and Hunk and Pidge and _Lance_ —

Like the Blades—

It didn’t matter.

He told himself it didn’t matter.

“Hey,” Shiro’s voice was soft through his comms, edges dulled by static and space dust. “Hey, buddy. Just ease back on the thrusters—”

“Keith!” Lance’s yell startled Keith for a moment, but not enough for him to change his trajectory. “What the hell do you think you’re doing up there, man? You can’t—”

“Oh no,” Hunk groaned. “No, no—”

“Don’t be a self-sacrificing idiot,” Pidge muttered, with the kind of distraction that made Keith think she was typing. _Calculating_. Guilt bit into him, shredding through him, seeped into his veins. They shouldn’t—they should have known it was the only way, they shouldn’t have been trying—

“We’ll find another way through,” Lance said. “Don’t think you’re taking all the glory up there for yourself.”

“They aren’t going to last long enough up here to wait for that,” Keith said, and he knew whatever other solution they came up with, it wouldn’t be good enough. More rebels would die in the meantime. Good people, with—with families to return to. Matt was up here.

Keith’s grip tightened on the controls, until his knuckles screamed beneath his gloves. He’d _never_ let Pidge feel that kind of loss again.

The guilt lingered like a persistent bruise.

What if this was a different way of hurting her?

He couldn’t think about that. Because for Keith, because in space, it was always deciding between the lesser of two evils. _Join a secret organization to learn more about yourself and abandon the only friend from Earth you had left._ Kill or be killed. _Destroy yourself so less of the rebellion will die._

They were still shouting, but there were only a few seconds left.

Sometimes, Keith missed the stillness and quiet that surrounded his shack in the desert. Even if he’d been alone, and lonely, even if he’d been packed so full of loss he felt like he was going to tear apart at the seams—

Sometimes there were nice parts, in the cruelest times.

“Thank you,” Keith interrupted them, letting out a breath when the comms turned mostly toward static. “For everything.”

For Shiro, rescuing Keith from himself more times than could be counted.

For Hunk, serving Keith the first homecooked meals he’d had in _years_ , the first since he’d lost his—his father, that had clearly been given with love.

For Pidge spending endless, sleepless nights awake with him in the castleship, never questioning when he wanted to sit by her side while she tinkered with something incomprehensible.

For . . . Lance.

Keith’s shoulders tucked a little closer to his ears. He pressed his lips together, as his vision filled with purple.

He hit the barrier and the explosion was all fire and sunsets and endings.

He knew what it felt like to split and fall and tear apart.

He knew what it felt like to want to let go.

Tipping, falling, boneless—Keith slipped from the opened healing pod and was caught in Shiro’s arms.

Pidge buried her face in his shoulder. Lance patted his hair. Everything looked dull, waving at the edges as if the healing pod hadn’t quite been able to eradicate a concussion.

A concussion.

No—he was supposed to hurt much more than this. Something had happened. Something bad.

“Don’t you ever do something like that again,” Pidge muttered, lifting her arm as if she was going to hit him before thinking better of it.

Something bad had happened because it looked like Pidge had been crying.

Brow furrowed, Keith glanced up toward Shiro. Nothing hurt, but there was an ache settled into his body. A tiredness in his bones that meant Keith couldn’t quite remember how to move, how to pull his feet beneath him. If Shiro hadn’t held onto him, he would have crashed against the floor. It was like he’d forgotten how the pieces of him were supposed to work.

Like something bad had happened.

Keith’s scowl deepened, because that thought felt familiar, almost like he’d had one like it before.

“Are you feeling alright, Keith?” Hunk asked nervously, tapping his fingers together as he peered down at the former paladin. “You were in there for a few days. Are you hungry? You should probably be hungry.”

Keith didn’t think he was hungry, but he was still having trouble remembering what hunger actually _was_. He knew he was in the castleship. He knew these people around him, his—his _friends_. 

He knew he was safe.

“Hello? Giant castle spaceship to Keith, come in Keith?” Lance waved his hand in front of Keith’s face. “Don’t tell me you’re falling asleep. You’ve been sleeping for days!”

“Actually, rest in our healing pods isn’t equivalent to a good night’s sleep.” _Allura_. Everyone else turned to look at her, somewhere out of Keith’s line of vision; he continued to watch the paladins, because it seemed like too much effort to shift his head. “It would probably be best for Keith’s health if he did relax a little while longer. Perhaps if you also stopped crowding around him?”

Keith didn’t mind it, because there was a strange tingling in his limbs, almost like he was trying to remember what it was like to feel—

What it was like to be—

To be—

_Warm_.

He closed his eyes, and felt Shiro shift under him with a chuckle that didn’t quite reach his lips.

“Take a nap, Keith. You earned it,” Shiro said, and Keith was already gone.

In what stood for morning on a castleship, they told him about the _after_. When the shield flickered and failed, destroyed. When Voltron made it to him, at least the pieces that were left.

No one would look at him for a minute, so Keith let himself sink back into his guilt. They’d thought he was dead. Had died. Was in pieces. They’d assumed he was gone, whatever shattered leftover bits spinning off into the endless depths of space alongside the remnants of his stolen Galra ship.

He felt guilty because he’d worried them, but Keith didn’t regret what he’d done. It’d worked. They’d won. The rebellion had taken losses, but not nearly as heavily as they would if Keith hadn’t . . .

He rubbed his head, then smoothed back his hair. Maybe Lance had a point, and he needed to cut it. The strands were getting too long, but Keith thought maybe he liked it like this.

“Keith,” Shiro said, and Keith realized his mind had drifted again. Healing pods weren’t perfect, and Coran had mentioned that Keith’s head would probably continue feeling fuzzy a few days longer. “Are you with us?”

“Yeah,” Keith answered before he was entirely sure that was true. “I’m here.”

“Well, you nearly weren’t,” Lance said. He _snapped_ , but his hands gripped his own arms so tightly that they betrayed the real emotion behind his anger. “Keith, your heart stopped.”

“You were dead,” Pidge agreed, fidgeting restlessly. They’d gathered in the lounge, where Keith would have somewhere comfortable to sit while pretending all of him didn’t ache. But most of the others had decided to remain standing, wound up tight. “It’s—you weren’t—”

“You weren’t breathing,” Hunk said, rubbing the back of his neck. To his credit, Hunk didn’t look queasy. Just as confused as Keith felt. “No heartbeat, no—there wasn’t—wasn’t—”

“Lance found you,” Shiro said, patting Keith’s knee to draw his attention back. Because there’d only been a flash of purple, bright and blinding and all-consuming, and Keith had known there was no coming back from that. It’d hurt, before he’d died. 

“Red found you,” Lance clarified, fingers digging into his arm before he sat on the edge of a nearby chair. “Red knew where you were. We grabbed you, and as soon as you were inside, I—I went to check.”

His gaze snapped over Keith’s, cursory but not really seeing. Remembering rather than looking.

“Your gear was shredded. There were . . . pieces,” Lance said, and refused to elaborate any further. “You hadn’t even activated your mask. You were out there for too long, but—”

But.

Keith would have died even if he’d had his mask sealed tight. He would have died because there was still a battle to win, and he’d only been one person, and it’d been too many minutes before Red was able to get to him.

But.

Keith settled his hand on his chest, confused by the breath in his own lungs.

Allura hadn’t said anything. She stared, but not the way she’d done once, when she’d thought she hated him. Not _him_ , his people. His heritage. His past.

Coran watched the ceiling as if doing anything else would make him burst.

“So,” Keith said after too long, when Lance was contemplating aloud about showing Keith the shredded remains of his Marmora suit to teach him a lesson. “You managed to resuscitate me? Altean tech?”

“No,” Pidge confessed, after another odd moment passed where the paladins seemed to be looking at everything but Keith. Not because he’d left them, but maybe because they didn’t want any of their words to convince him to leave _again_. “Shiro helped Lance bring you into the infirmary. We thought . . . that was it.”

Oh. 

They hadn’t tried saving him because he’d been beyond saving. Beside him, Shiro’s prosthetic hand tightened into a fist.

Wasn’t this why Keith had asked Shiro for help, years ago? Why he’d gone to Coran asking the same, when the things in his head seemed to warp all over again?

So Shiro wouldn’t have to deal with a dead Keith.

Still, somehow, Shiro had ended up carrying Keith’s corpse across a spaceship.

His head hurt. But he hadn’t been a corpse. He hadn’t been dead. Technically. Probably.

“But then Allura told us to put you in a pod,” Hunk said, twisting his hands together. “If it wasn’t for her, you wouldn’t be here. We wouldn’t have saved you. I’m so sorry, Keith!”

Was that why they were being so strange? Because they’d assumed a massive explosion and being spaced for who knew how long had ended up killing him?

Because they’d thought rationally?

Allura folded her hands in her lap, shaking her head as she refused to take credit for this. Coran nearly looked like he’d start whistling to keep up a facsimile of innocence as he stared a hole into the ceiling.

“Perhaps we only have a little more experience in knowing when healing pods may be useful,” Allura said. “I’m very relieved to know things worked out, in the end. Although that was very reckless, Keith.”

He sank back into the couch, and his thoughts drifted like faraway constellations, until Shiro shook his arm and helped him to his room.

_His_ room.

They’d kept it just as he’d left it.

Keith was still standing there, trying to decide how he felt about all of this, before someone knocked on his door.

Allura.

“Keith,” she said, and then hesitated. For a moment it looked like she might try to hug him, and like she was afraid he’d try to do something like stab her, which was fair. “I want to apologize again for any confusion you may be experiencing. We—Coran and I, that is—did not intend to cause you any additional distress. I’ve heard it can be fairly off-putting, in the aftermath.”

Squinting at her, Keith wasn’t sure if she wasn’t making sense because of the head injury or because he didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Uh,” Keith said, before he grunted, and then tried to think of something more eloquent to say to a princess. “Thank you. I mean. You saved my life.”

“Yes, well,” Allura cleared her throat, before giving him a smile that looked a little wry at the edges. “I do owe you a lot, for how I have treated you in the past. It truly was the least I could do. But, after that—”

She pulled a datapad from behind her back, settling it in Keith’s hands. They were shaking. His head ached. Every part of him down to his soul was tired.

“I believe he may have some answers for you,” Allura said, patting Keith’s arm—maybe a compromise, for how close she’d wanted to get earlier—before leaving his room.

He glanced down at the screen. A familiar face was there, waiting to speak. “Kolivan?”

“Keith,” Kolivan said, leaning closer to the viewscreen. “We need to talk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M BACK BABY
> 
> I'm soooo sorry for the long wait, some time consuming things came up. Please know that I'm still fully invested in this fic and I genuinely appreciate the love you all have given it! Thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to read and comment. It means so much! What did you think of this chapter? I definitely took some liberties here, but we had to have some _slight_ canon divergence. Keith's first death in space! Oh dear. He's nearly halfway through his lives. What do you think might happen to him next??
> 
> The next update will come much sooner! <3
> 
> Find me over on [tumblr](http://imreadingabook.tumblr.com)!


	5. Pallbearer

He could have told Shiro.

That was the thing that bothered him most, knowing and sitting in the _after_ when Kolivan ended the call. Knowing and refusing to walk down the hall to find Shiro, to talk through the tension tightening in his chest, curling his hands into fists. 

Keith decided it was better if no one else knew.

Well, Coran and Allura had their suspicions. After all, they knew more about the Galra than any of the others. They knew how biologically different, _alien_ , Galra were compared to humanity. But they’d deferred to Kolivan, because half-breeds were . . . complicated.

Half-Galra were complicated. Keith was complicated. He might have sneered at that, if the evidence didn’t make it so wholly true.

_“Most half-Galra have their other side overwhelm this . . . ability,” Kolivan had said. “They end up only with one life, or perhaps a few short ones. According to the data your Alteans transmitted to me, this appears to be untrue for you. The human side of you hasn’t undone this survival mechanism. Hypothetically, you should have all nine lives.”_

Nine lives.

Nine.

Keith had spent so much time worried about fucking up the _one_ , very short, very human life he was meant to have.

_“Eight left now,” Kolivan had pointed out. “But it’s very important for you to keep track, Keith. And it only works if there’s enough of you left to revive. Remember that. This is no invitation for you to become reckless.”_

Reckless. They’d all thought he was being reckless, flying right at that barrier. He’d known it would be the last thing he’d do for the universe. He’d known, and he’d _cared_ , but he’d still done it. Just because Keith hadn’t really wanted to die hadn’t meant it wasn’t the right thing to do.

It’d worked out for the best. He’d survived. Sort of.

_“I need you to think for me, Keith,” Kolivan said. “Are there any other moments in your life when you should have died, but didn’t?”_

Yes.

Yes.

Keith hated the furrow that appeared on Kolivan’s brow, hated that he didn’t know what the expression on his own face looked like, when he immediately knew the answer.

He didn’t have eight lives left.

That was why he couldn’t tell anyone, about any of this. Why he couldn’t tell _Shiro_ , because his brother—

His brother would hear about how Keith could survive death, sort of, and maybe for a little while he’d feel better about sending Keith out into the universe to risk life and limb, but—

But eventually Shiro would remember.

The Garrison. The skipped classes. The dorm room. Keith, in his bathroom, taking too long to unlock the door—

Asking for help, as soon as he managed to fumble it open.

Shiro, whose face had been so calm and open, when he sat on Keith’s rickety-ass Garrison twin bed and thought of a new way forward.

Shiro, who’d walked Keith through bad medications and good ones, who’d believed in him even through the bad—the fights, the missed classes, the days so sticky with repressed _wrongness_ they clung to Keith and threatened to drag him down again.

Then he’d know.

He’d know Keith had only gone for help, after.

After he’d had a chance to realize he wanted to figure out a way to live.

After he’d—

After he’d killed himself.

Keith didn’t sleep that night, after he spoke to Kolivan. Instead he stayed awake, eyes straining into the darkness as he created a mental timeline, a roadmap of near-misses and injuries and hurts which led him to the conclusion that he’d already burned through nearly half his lives.

More than most could ever hope to have.

But to Kolivan—

The Blades’ leader had reminded Keith of how young he was, by Galra standards. Young to have lost _one_ life.

Keith had died four times, probably. Looking at him, he physically didn’t seem to be any worse for it.

He’d spent so long desperate to find out more about himself—his family, his past, his place in the world. But he decided not to pry into this. He didn’t call Kolivan again. He stuck with Voltron, to see where he might be able to help them the most.

Because if he did have extra lives—

Well, Kolivan had said not to be reckless. But humans only lived once.

Sometimes, Keith left on missions. Sometimes, he took risks. He found his mother. Krolia figured it out—of course she did. There didn’t end up being much they could hide between them, but even she didn’t know the real count of how many lives he had left.

He left Coran and Allura to assume that Keith had no other lives to spare, that this _extra_ had been a fluke. Kolivan and Krolia weren’t exactly talkative enough to tell them otherwise.

He didn’t tell Shiro _he didn’t tell Shiro_ he didn’t tell anyone.

Maybe that was why he didn’t notice. Because when Keith was busy trying so hard not to reveal one thing, it was difficult to realize when someone else was hiding something from him, too. 

Maybe that was why it took Keith too long, it took until it was too late, for him to realize that Shiro . . . wasn’t exactly _Shiro_ anymore.

Not even death could prevent Keith from getting his brother back.

\- - -

“I’m not leaving here without you.”

Keith could tell from the sneer on Shiro’s face—on the _thing_ that wore Shiro’s face—that he thought Keith’s words were weakness. He didn’t understand.

Keith was going to stay until he understood.

“I knew I should have abandoned you, just like everyone else has,” Shiro’s lips curled with derision. “When are you going to get it, Keith? Neither of us are leaving here.”

Unstable metal shook beneath Keith’s heels. Groans and snaps pocked the air, too close to be safe. Shiro lunged, and he was ready for it.

“Come, on Shiro!” Keith shouted as their blades crashed together. The heat roiling from the blade Shiro had formed with his arm threatened to boil Keith’s skin even beneath his gloves. He shifted, sword sliding just enough to protect him as he rolled out of the way. Heat and metal crashed into the ground behind him. The entire structure quaked. “I know you’re still in there. I know you can—”

His breath caught in his throat as he parried another of Shiro’s strikes, the force pushing him backward a few inches. Closer to the edge; closer to the abyss, where pieces of metal, and—and tubes filled with things that looked like Shiro toppled over the side. Burned and burned and burned as they were drawn inexorably into the atmosphere. 

“Does it make you feel better to think you still have a chance to save me?” Shiro’s voice was so steady, so _calm_ , even behind the rage that made his expression something ugly. “I’m right here, Keith. I know what I’m doing. And I want nothing to do with you.”

Keith’s arm strained, and they fought.

It was nothing like the sparring they’d done back at the Garrison, where Shiro would pin him in a headlock and muss his hair until he couldn’t see.

It was nothing like the sparring they’d done back on the castleship, where Shiro would correct his technique and they’d go again and again and _again_ until they were sure their muscles could remember to keep each other safe even if their heads ended up distracted.

This Shiro was angry. This Shiro fought without any care for himself, slicing and diving and drawing himself into danger just as much as he did Keith.

This Shiro wanted desperately to kill him.

“Shiro—”

“Do you _ever_ shut up?” Shiro demanded, eyes rolling when Keith managed to knock him backward. 

“No,” Keith snapped. “I’m never going to stop fighting for you. No matter what.”

That only made Shiro’s eyes narrow further.

Keith didn’t know how it happened. One moment they were fighting, Keith with a frantic kind of defense, Shiro with an aggressive offense that might have been sloppy if Keith had actually been interested in hurting him. Maybe they exchanged similar blows too many times. Maybe the entire structure they were standing on lurched.

Keith fell, and slid, and skid, and just barely managed to pull his sword up in time to protect himself and keep Shiro from slicing directly into his head.

“Shiro,” he gasped, while his arm shook with the strain of keeping that laser blade away. His grip felt too uncertain on his sword; it didn’t matter how hard he fought. Shiro—not Shiro—just kept _coming_. “You’re my brother.”

The hard lines of Shiro’s face stung with their indifference.

“I love you.”

For a moment it felt like Shiro stopped. Like something flickered behind his eyes, like maybe there was something else there inside of him, something _fighting_ \--

But then Shiro’s arm slipped close enough to Keith’s face to _burn_ , and when he loomed closer his grin seemed to relish Keith’s inevitable scream.

The scent of his burned flesh slipped between them.

“I just can’t decide,” Shiro said, as his arm sunk lower. “Should I carve you into so many pieces you’ll never be able to regenerate? Or should I let you keep coming back to life, so I can kill you all over again?”

Keith could have told Shiro.

But he never had.

His amethyst eyes widened, because he’d already known Shiro would never hurt him like this, because he knew the real Shiro _wasn’t supposed to know—_

Then he looked past Shiro, over his shoulder.

“Oh.”

Metal fell. Fire bloomed.

And they were—

The structure—

They were falling and the structure was failing as huge pieces of metal crashed down around them. Jarring enough for Keith to wedge his sword around Shiro’s, enough to crush the casing of Shiro’s arm—

Enough for them to fall, together.

And Keith held on tight, because—

Because even if his lives weren’t enough to save him, and even if Shiro only had the one and had maybe been lost a long while before—

Keith wasn’t going to let go.

\- - -

“Careful. Careful—hey! I said be careful!”

Keith mumbled, and he didn’t mean for it to be incoherent but somehow the words lost themselves somewhere between his mind and his mouth. His lips barely moved; every piece of him too heavy, too old, and Lance’s voice was too loud—too close.

Still. There was a solid arm around his shoulders, keeping him upright. Propping him just enough to give him something to lean against while he regained some sensibility.

“There you go. You’re going to end up throwing yourself off the cot if you keep squirming around, and then I’m—I mean, Coran is going to be really pissed. He already did a lot of work patching you together again and _telling us that it was okay you were dead because maybe it wouldn’t be permanent._ ”

Oh. Maybe Coran and Allura hadn’t been as oblivious as Keith had hoped, or maybe that had all changed when Keith had ended up . . . dead . . . again.

Only four lives left now, if he’d really started with all nine.

Kolivan would be pissed.

Krolia would probably take one of his lives by killing him for being so wasteful. He was pretty sure most mothers expressed their love through creative threats.

But if Lance knew the truth, the other Paladins did, too. And—

“Shiro?” Keith tipped his head back, and Lance rearranged his stance so Keith’s head wouldn’t hang cranked at such an odd angle.

“Yeah, uh, I don’t really know how much to explain to you, because we were all taking turns watching you. Like, your heart restarted hours ago and you were breathing fine, but Allura didn’t know how long it’d take you to heal enough to wake up on your own, and Coran didn’t think a healing pod was a good idea, so—”

Fumbling, Keith wrapped his fingers in Lance’s shirt. He couldn’t really shake him around, but it made Lance stop talking. Just for a minute.

“Where’s Shiro?”

Lance let out an oddly pitched noise that sort of made Keith want to kill him because it was obviously just put there to waste time.

“I’m here.”

_I’m here._

Every part of Keith ached like the top layers of his skin had been peeled off and rearranged in _almost_ the way he was meant to go back together. Every bone felt knocked around, his eyes stung like the air was too heavy, words felt like they could break his teeth.

“Hey, Shiro,” Lance said, wrapping his arm a little tighter around Keith’s shoulders. “I didn’t really know what to say about . . . anything.”

Keith didn’t mind so much that Lance was there literally supporting him, anymore. Shiro stood in the infirmary doorway, looking a little bit like he’d impacted on a planet’s surface himself. His hair was brilliantly white. His prosthetic arm was missing.

There were wrinkles around his eyes, little amused signs of tiredness, creases that the thing pretending to be him hadn’t had.

“Lance, could you—” Keith glanced over toward the other Paladin, who already nodded.

“Don’t worry. I’ve got you,” Lance said, and he was right. His arms were steady, as he helped Keith stand, as he helped him walk, as he deposited him into Shiro’s arms.

“How?” Keith asked, wrapping his arms around Shiro, tight. He didn’t let Lance help him back onto the cot until he was satisfied, and ready to hold part of his own weight, and didn’t think Shiro would slip away from him again.

“Allura,” Shiro said. “That’s the short explanation. The real one is a lot more complicated. Uh, Lance, could you—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lance laughed, backing toward the doorway with a mock salute. “I’ve got you.”

A few minutes later, the Alteans and Paladins were piled into the infirmary. One big, happy, _living_ family, safely tucked away in a nonessential part of space where they wouldn’t be attacked while they healed.

“I’m going to tell you about how they got me back,” Shiro said from where he sat next to Keith. Hunk had fussed over them, giving them too many pillows to pile in around them. Lance was already complaining about the state of Keith’s hair. “Then you’re going to tell us about what’s been going on with you. We all know you’ve been keeping something from us.”

Keith’s stomach dropped uncertainly, as one by one he watched, Coran and Allura, Pidge and Hunk, Lance and Shiro, stare at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last death that'll have some crossover to canon events I thought would lend well to . . . dying. Yes, I do know all the ways Keith will continue to die, but I love hearing y'all speculate so let me hear what you think might happen next! 
> 
> Also, as far as I'm concerned, this is the only chapter where Shiro's clone appears. Did I want the timeline to change specifically so real Shiro could be around for more of Keith's deaths? ... yes. Of course. Did I make Keith miss real Shiro returning because he was busy being DEAD? Also yes. Oops.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed reading!
> 
> Find me over on [tumblr](http://imreadingabook.tumblr.com)!


	6. Eulogy

“So you just . . . weren’t going to tell us about this,” Pidge said, after Keith had sort of casually mentioned he could die at least a few more times and expect to survive his own death. The Paladins hadn’t taken the news well, and Keith didn’t know who to blame for outing him like this.

The Galra?

. . . Shiro?

“Uh, if we’re busy fighting the Galra, how could we not know about this ability . . . survival . . . thing?” Hunk asked, raising his hand.

“Because it appears that in the time Coran and I have been gone, the Galra have done their best to erase knowledge of this from the universe. Perhaps they believe it would be more to their advantage if hardly anyone knew many of them have several lives in reserve. We did contact Kolivan about this, when Coran suspected—”

“Kolivan knows?” Lance asked, throwing up his hands after he’d interrupted Allura. “Great! It’s all one big alien secret!”

“Well, to be quite frank, this isn’t something that would greatly impact on our current strategy,” Allura said. “The Galra cannot—that is to say, they have to—uh—”

“If we’re busy blasting them with lasers and incinerating them, or sending them floating out into the depths space, they aren’t going to come back,” Keith said bluntly. “Sounds like there needs to be enough of a person left, under the right conditions, for reanimation to be possible. No, we aren’t experimenting with it.”

He squeezed the last sentence in before Pidge could even fully open her mouth.

“So you still could have died,” Hunk said. “You would have been _dead_ dead, if the Lions hadn’t found you in time for us to . . . preserve you.”

“I guess.” Keith shrugged, and hated how weak the motion made him feel. Maybe he was just being ridiculous, complaining about a little lack of muscle strength after he’d literally just died.

“Perhaps we should look at this as a good development,” Allura suggested. “After all, Keith will have seven lives left. A great asset to have in a Paladin.”

One, hitting the shield around that Galra cruiser.

Two, falling with Shiro.

No. That wasn’t right. There’d been so many more. Maybe it was the remnants of death lingering in his brain, but Keith wasn’t sure he had it in him to lie about that. Not when he’d had so much time to contemplate how many lives he had left, after speaking with Kolivan.

“Uh,” Keith grunted, tugging at his collar.

“Oh, no,” Lance said. “No. Nope. I don’t want to hear whatever you’re going to say, because it doesn’t sound like it’ll be good.”

But weren’t they all upset that he’d kept this from them in the first place? Surely that meant they’d welcome any additional information, if Keith had some to give. 

Having friends was confusing.

_Friends_. Right. They were his friends.

They weren’t all gathered in the infirmary to yell at him, to—to ask him to leave the castleship, or send him back to the Blades, or anything like that. The Paladins, Coran, and Allura were all there because they . . . cared. Because they’d been worried about him, _for_ him. Because they wanted to understand.

So they shouldn’t have been acting all offended that Keith was trying to _keep_ telling them the truth when really he could have kept his mouth shut and none of them would have known any better until his final, actual, irreversible death.

“Keith,” Shiro said, in that kind, soft voice he used whenever he thought maybe Keith would try to run away from him, and his problems. It was only unfortunate that Keith was vaguely certain he’d end up falling over if he tried to even stand on his own. Being forced to face death’s difficulties sucked. “You think you might have . . . less?”

Keith shrugged again.

He wished he could shove away his newfound problems with that quick movement.

“I probably have, like . . . half?” Keith suggested, brow furrowing.

Flinching backward on the cot, he knocked against Shiro when everyone in the infirmary started shouting.

“But you’re—for humans, you aren’t very old,” Coran frowned, rubbing his hand against his forehead while he stared at Keith with disbelief. “From the information I’ve gathered on the lifespan of a human, that seems highly improbable.”

“Perhaps you are mistaken?” Allura asked, not because she might not have believed him, but because she didn’t _want_ to.

Pidge echoed “Half!” a few times, while Hunk groaned and looked a little like he contemplated slipping out of the room to be sick.

“How?” Lance asked finally, cutting through the noise. “Keith, you’re—you’re just a teenager. _How?_ ”

How was Keith supposed to answer that?

One, the fire.

Two, drowning.

Three, dying because of . . . himself. His own mind. His thoughts.

“Everyone, let’s calm down for just a minute,” Shiro said, holding up his hand. “Keith is still recovering. I don’t think this is a productive conversation for him to be having right now.”

Four, the barrier.

Five, falling. _Falling_.

Keith didn’t want to die three more times. He’d had enough of it. He’d had too much. He should have gone, like his father, _with_ his father, and then—

But then—

Keith never would have made it this far, if the fire had gotten him.

If his life had ended, that first time, he’d never have met Shiro. He never would have realized how much he loved to fly.

He never would have had the chance to defend the universe.

When he blinked, he realized Shiro was getting off the infirmary cot, trying to shuffle a few very concerned people out the door. Hesitating, before he turned back to Keith—wondering if it was alright if he stayed, if Keith would want someone else there.

Wondering if Keith was afraid of him. Keith saw that was the real question in Shiro’s eyes. But that person he’d fought among crumpling metal, that he’d died alongside while they fell—that person, that thing, hadn’t been Shiro. They’d only been pretending, and hadn’t done a very good job of it in the end.

“Shiro, come on. I trust you,” Keith said, accompanied by a look telling Shiro—telling his _brother_ that he was a fucking idiot if he believed otherwise for even a moment.

But his limbs, his eyelids, his thoughts were too heavy to worry about whether Shiro would come back after he managed to get everyone else out of the infirmary.

Keith didn’t remain awake much longer, but he thought that in the meantime, while he slept, he would be alright. They would be alright.

\- - -

Lance came to talk to him, a few hours after Keith managed to shuffle to his bedroom.

“Hey, Lance, what’s—”

“Can I come in?” Lance asked, nearly hanging through Keith’s doorway. “Just for a minute. You look like you need to sit down, anyway.”

Keith scowled—it was instinct by that point, he swore—but backed away enough that Lance could come inside, door sliding shut behind him.

After he remained standing for a pointed moment more, Keith sat on the edge of his bed. Because it was smarter to conserve his energy. Because he was recovering. Not because Lance thought it was a good idea.

Lance, who leaned back against his wall now and flicked his gaze all over Keith’s room with an unreadable expression.

“Did you need something?” Keith asked, wondering if he was supposed to read Lance’s mind. Or apologize for some reason? Or . . . talk. Because they were friends. Keith had friends now, and friends did social things, like talking, for no reason.

The Paladins probably didn’t expect Keith to do that. If they did, he was going to have to ask Shiro how he could stop it.

“Yeah! Yeah,” Lance said, scratching the back of his head. For someone who usually seemed so sure of himself, this was a rare look at him acting out of place. “I wanted to tell you I have a plan.”

Keith’s frown returned, because he didn’t know _what_ Lance would be prepping a plan for, but it couldn’t be anything good. “A . . . plan?”

“Yeah!” Lance said again, before his hand started tugging at his hair. “For you.”

“You have a plan,” Keith repeated. “For me. Should I be worried?”

“Nope.” A little of Lance’s confidence returned, as his shoulders straightened. “I’m going to help you. All of this, uh, this—dying. You dying. I know not all of it could have been, uh, prevented but—but we’re going to go with the _plan_. It’ll help.”

For a moment, Keith wondered if maybe one of the side effects of death meant hallucination, or eternal torment by one’s quasi-enemy-slash-friend. But Lance was just _standing_ there, blinking at him expectantly.

“Maybe you don’t understand this,” Keith said, leaning back a little. Mostly because his arms, propped on his mattress, were the only things currently keeping him upright. The rest of him felt boneless—useless. “I’m not using up all of my lives on purpose.”

Well.

There had been the one time.

But it had been a mistake.

“No! That isn’t what I’m saying. Ha. No,” Lance said, before he tugged out the chair at Keith’s empty desk and sat on it, backwards. It didn’t help him relax; instead, Lance’s fingers started drumming on the back of it. “I don’t think you’re purposefully using up all of your lives, Keith. But if we work together, I think we might be able to keep you from using any more of them.”

“We work together constantly,” Keith pointed out. “I don’t go on as many missions with the Blades anymore. We sort of have to work together to form Voltron.”

Yeah, okay, he needed to rein in his tone and stop speaking as if Lance was being an idiot. It was just freaking him out, a little. That Lance was there because he . . . cared.

“That isn’t the point, and you know it,” Lance said, jabbing a finger toward Keith. “You still do your whole lone wolf thing. ‘Oh, there’s a whole horde of Galra, let me charge right at them! Alone! I’m Keith, I can do anything with my sword. I don’t need to wait for backup from my team!’” Lance’s voice pitched higher while he mimicked someone who was _definitely nothing like Keith_.

“I don’t—”

“You do. Constantly. And it usually works out. You’re a great fighter, Keith. We need you on our side. I—we all need you to be here with us. Which is why we’re going to do some extra training. See? The plan isn’t even a bad thing. You love training. You’re always training,” Lance said.

“You want me to train harder?” Keith asked, tilting his head to the side. His sheets were incredibly, unfairly soft beneath his hands. If he could only lay down, just for a moment—

“With me,” Lance said. “With all of us. We’re going to work on more strategies that involve all of us. No more running off on your own. I mean, you can still, like, charge in and do your whole scary sword thing. But with your trusty sharpshooter backing you up? Dude, imagine the things we could do. Together.”

It . . . wasn’t a terrible plan. Keith really did like training. And learning a few new strategies, coming up with ways to work well with others—with his friends, it would be good. Especially because Keith was keenly aware the rest of them only had this one life and absolutely none to spare. He needed to be there for them, all of them.

“I . . .” Keith shifted so he could rub his forehead, the beginnings of a headache threatening. It was a mistake, because he felt his other arm—too weak, too half-dead to fully prop him up—begin to shake.

“I’m sorry,” Lance said, and he actually did sound it. “But I didn’t come here to give you a choice. I just wanted to let you know what’s going to happen. Because with you, what happened to you—I can’t—I—”

Lance glanced down at his hands, and Keith saw that the other Paladin was shaking, too.

Maybe they both still had pieces of them left to revive.

“Are you alright?” Keith asked, and maybe there was something sharp in his voice, because Lance looked up almost immediately.

“Red found you,” Lance said. The words spilled from his lips like a confession, a secret. “Both times. It wasn’t me. I had to be shown the way, to—to where you were. After the barrier. After you and Shiro fell. This time, it was—I mean, you and Shiro, you were both just . . . laying there. But the barrier, there were—Red caught you, after, and there were . . . pieces. I knew you couldn’t have survived. I tried—I tried telling the others, that you were gone, and then when Coran told us you were waking up Pidge said I must have made a mistake. That they’d managed to restart your heart, or something.”

Keith tried very hard not to imagine what his own corpse looked like. Particularly not after it had met with an explosion.

“They didn’t understand that I knew you couldn’t have survived that,” Lance said. “So when it happened the second time, I wasn’t sure if you would actually come back. Until Allura and Coran told us what really happened, after we found you and Shiro. I didn’t think—I thought maybe you’d used up all of your luck the first time. That you wouldn’t get another chance.”

Keith tried very hard not to imagine Lance, hunched over in Red, peering down at Shiro and Keith, Keith and Shiro, two bodies too still and quiet and broken and _gone_. One for Allura to revive and restore. One waiting for his alien heritage to kick in.

But Lance hadn’t known then that either of them would be fine.

To Lance, he’d been stuck inside his Lion with the bodies of two friends.

“I’m not going to do that to you again,” Keith said. He knew it was a promise he couldn’t make, maybe couldn’t keep, but he said it anyway because he liked the spark it lit in Lance’s eyes. “We’ll train hard. We’ll work together. And you won’t need to go through anything like that again, Lance. Not alone.”

“Because we’re in this together,” Lance said. When he clasped Keith’s hand, it steadied both of them. No more shaking. “We’re a team.”

“We’re a good team,” Keith smiled.

\- - -

It was a promise he _did_ keep.

For a while.

For years.

Fighting the Galra, Lance and Keith, back to back. Covering each other, saving each other, fighting for each other. Sometimes all the Paladins would go out into the field together. Sometimes Keith would be paired with Allura, or Coran, or there would be other specialized missions for him to complete. Covering Pidge while she hacked a Galra operating system. Traveling with Hunk to a distant planet to forge an alliance over culinary tastes. Tracking down prison ships alongside Shiro, freeing as many victims as they could find.

But Keith worked best with Lance.

They _were_ a good team.

So when it happened, it happened quick.

Not during a battle. There was no fight. It happened during a recovery mission—a simple job, an alert sent to them by one of the allies they’d collected to fight with them against the Galra. They were so close to ending this war, winning this fight; they needed all the goodwill they could get from those who could support them the most.

So when they traveled to the planet, to an unstable region, to evacuate innocent civilians uprooted by natural disaster as the ground hummed beneath their boots, no one thought twice about it. There were people in danger and Voltron would be able to help. They didn’t consider that they’d spread themselves too thin.

Until the world shifted. Until the ground shook. And even before it happened, Keith, who’d been on a final sweep of one of the evacuated buildings, knew it would be bad.

The surface of the planet had become increasingly unstable in this area, meaning alien earthquakes, meaning danger. The first jolt was just enough to knock Keith off his feet, bringing him hard to his knees. He knew he would bruise, even through his armor.

There must have been some pain in his exhale, because Lance’s voice crackled in his voice. “Keith? Status.”

The ground moved again before he could answer. The building was half some kind of molded alien plastic, half rock, and Keith looked upward in time to see sky—sickly, yellow sky—where the ceiling should have been.

“Lan—”

It felt like the ground buckled beneath him, then jerked upward to punch him, hard. There were stars in his eyes. Staccato vibrations of large things falling around him like discarded meteors. His head knocked against something and despite his helmet, it left Keith with only flashes of consciousness.

A patch of gray rock. Jagged, broken building materials. A slice of sky. A scream. Static. Pain. Confusion. Silence. _Silence_.

When Keith opened his eyes, he didn’t know if the ground had only just settled or if he’d been out for a while. 

_I died_ , he thought, before he realized that wasn’t true. He’d been dead before, and returning didn’t feel like this. Reviving left an ache in his bones, a tiredness that seemed to steal a little away from his soul. This—this hurt. Pain left him breathless. Pain made him groan.

_I’m dying_ , Keith realized. He’d never had the chance to anticipate what was happening to him, before. To feel himself slipping away, to know there was a chance he’d come back. To know there was absolutely nothing he could do about any of it.

Someone shouted in his ear.

He coughed, but no contaminants had entered his helmet. Well—that was a lie. The visor was slightly cracked, a hairline fracture running through his vision. There wasn’t much left for him to see, anyway. On his stomach, neck cranked at an odd angle so his chin was propped uncomfortably on the ground. Dust filled the air, motes still swirling, so he couldn’t have been unconscious for very long. But the air in his helmet still felt fairly clean.

No, it was hard to breathe because it felt like something enormous sat on his back, and Keith hadn’t moved yet because he _couldn’t_ move.

“Keith, I swear, if you don’t answer me right fucking now—”

He probably had a concussion. That was why the world spun so much when he tried looking at it, even though he was pinned down like an unlucky specimen. Why he was trying so hard not to throw up inside his helmet. It was the least of his problems, but it mattered, because it made it so difficult to concentrate that Keith wanted to—he wanted to—

His eyes stung.

He thought maybe he wanted to cry.

About a foot away from him, he could see his right hand. Earlier, it’d been holding his bayard, but that was . . . elsewhere, now. When Keith tried very hard, when he focused, his fingers twitched. That was good.

Because he couldn’t see what had happened behind him, couldn’t twist to see what was on top of him.

Because it felt like maybe his back was broken, and he couldn’t feel his legs.

Drawing in another breath, his lungs felt like they were starting to burn.

“Keith?”

He knew that voice. _Lance_. Lance sounded so sad. He kept saying something, but the words escaped Keith nearly as soon as they slipped into his ear.

“What?” Keith’s voice sounded like gravel and pain. It sounded like he’d exhaled and lost every ounce of his breath before trying to speak.

“Keith!” Lance exploded, until Keith needed to close his eyes for a moment because the loudness of it was exhausting. “Keith, say something else. Keep talking to me. Come on, buddy.”

“I’m stuck,” Keith said, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. What was he supposed to say? Something else? His fingers twitched, tapping against the ground. Chipped rock shifted beneath his glove. “I’m—I—I can’t—”

“Hey.” Lance’s voice had changed—or maybe Keith had been wrong about it beforehand, maybe Lance hadn’t been panicked, because it was hard to concentrate and think and know and _remember_. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay. We know you’re down there. Pidge added that tracking system to our armor, remember? The others are all heading over here, and they’re going to help me get you out. Just sit tight.”

“I can’t,” Keith said, and when he coughed again it felt like his lips were wet. “I can’t sit. I can’t move.”

“That’s—that’s alright, Keith. You shouldn’t be shifting things around down there, anyway,” Lance said. “Stay where you are, then.”

“Okay.” It was easier, to have Lance telling him what to do, because his mind was jumbled and his thoughts crumpled whenever he neared them enough to touch. But he knew he trusted Lance. He knew— “Oh, no.”

“What? What’s happening down there?” Lance’s panic was back. Keith felt like he should have known it wouldn’t go far. “Pidge is almost here. Hunk and Shiro aren’t far behind her. It’ll only be a few minutes. Only a few, okay? Keith?”

Keith remembered he was supposed to say something. “I’m—I’m sorry.”

“What?” The crackle in Keith’s ear deepened, as if Lance had pressed his mouth closer. Maybe that was just wishful thinking, because in the spaces between Lance’s words it was too quiet down there.

“I didn’t mean to,” Keith said, and there it was again. That feeling like he was going to cry. It was such a foreign thing, even if he knew the other Paladins wouldn’t think it was bad. Shiro had seen him cry too much, in the early years. Lance would have probably been proud of him for actually showing some emotion. _Lance_. He’d been talking to Lance. Right. “I—I really didn’t mean to, Lance. I’m sorry.”

“What are you talking about, Keith?” Lance asked. “Any of us would have gone into that building. It seemed secure. And just a few minutes ago, two houses down—do you remember? Before we split up. You found that kid, hiding in his bedroom. We needed to check this one too, to be sure no one was left behind.”

“No,” Keith said stubbornly, and then he needed to stop again. To cough. It hurt, like his lungs were turning to stone. He didn’t want to open his eyes again, but he forced himself to, to focus on the one hand he could see. “I promised I wouldn’t do this again.”

Lance was quiet.

Lance was so quiet.

“You aren’t allowed to talk like that,” Lance said, in that quiet voice Keith knew well from years of working by his side. Keith and Lance, back to back. A team. When Lance was really angry, truly angry, he didn’t shout. He didn’t scream, he didn’t curse in English or Spanish or any of the alien languages they’d picked up over time. Lance grew serious; Lance grew stronger. “Pidge just landed, okay? We’re already setting up a plan to get you out of there. Doesn’t matter what shape you’re in. We’ll put you right in a pod, okay?”

“Don’t patch Pidge into our comms,” Keith said, shifting his arm. He couldn’t stretch it very far, because more debris had landed nearby. But if he tucked his wrist beneath his elbow, carefully, he could flip his arm over to reach his side. There was enough of him left to be sure he didn’t want Pidge to hear any of this.

He didn’t want Lance to hear it, either, but he’d have to take his helmet off to switch off his comms completely, and Keith was supposed to be doing whatever he could to keep himself alive. That didn’t include risking his head, because more debris could fall at any moment.

“Keith, did you hear what I said? We’re digging you out and then putting you in a healing pod. Coran’s already prepping one,” Lance told him. “You aren’t going to use another one.”

Another life. He’d already been over halfway done with them. The other deaths felt kinder, because he hadn’t really known what was happening. Most had taken Keith unawares, or at least they’d been quick. 

Keith had never really wanted to be able to pinpoint the exact moment of his own death.

He didn’t want to be able to remember what it felt like to slip away.

When his glove brushed against something jagged behind him, Keith’s gut churned. Black threatened at the edges of his vision. He kept his touch gentle, when it trailed down to his side. When his glove became warm—so warm—and sticky.

“I’m really—I’m really sorry, Lance,” Keith said, and so much of him felt numb, and the parts of him he could feel hurt so much that they burned and ached and screamed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I tried, I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

Keith coughed again, and something dark spattered against his cracked visor. Something wet dripped down his face.

“Keith,” Lance said, and he closed his eyes because Lance’s voice had gone the nicer kind of quiet. The one that made Keith sure Lance was a great leader, even if Lance never really seemed to believe in that himself. “You know I don’t want you to go. None of us want to lose you. You know I want you to fight, as long as you can. As hard as you can.”

Keith was trying. He had tried. But he didn’t think his fingers were moving anymore, and he couldn’t see anyway, because he didn’t think he’d be able to open his eyes.

“But if you have to go, that isn’t your fault, either. You’re a hero, Keith. You’re here to help people. No matter what happens, we’re still going in there to find you,” Lance said. “No matter what happens. I’ll be there when you wake up.”

It hurt. It hurt. The pain throbbed with every heartbeat, every time Keith’s lungs shuddered and shrieked for more air. He hated that he could feel the weakness enclosing, the darkness reaching for him.

It made him feel what he’d realized when he’d tried taking his own life, when he’d sacrificed himself because there was no other option left, when he’d fallen—

“I don’t want to die,” Keith admitted. When he tried to inhale again, to say something else, to breathe, he could only wheeze. The noise coming from his lungs didn’t sound very good. His lips were warm, dripping with something heavy and terrible.

Lance said his name a few more times, before he seemed to realize that Keith couldn’t say anything else at all. Sometimes his voice faded away, so Keith knew he was switching to another comm channel to speak to the other Paladins. They were probably all there by then, all waiting just outside. But they couldn’t dig him out quickly. They couldn’t rush this, because there needed to be enough of Keith left to revive. No time to experiment and see how many pieces of him they could crush and still have him come back.

Their best chance at letting him live probably meant letting him die.

Keith knew it. He knew they must have come to the same conclusion, and he was grateful that Lance hadn’t let them on the line. Shiro was probably upset about that. But it was Keith’s life. His choices.

“Hey, buddy.” The only response to Lance’s voice for a while had been wet, rattling breaths; Keith wanted to apologize for that, too, but everything was beginning to get blotchy with static. His thoughts drifted away as quickly as they arrived, unable to take root in his mind. Keith knew didn’t want Lance to have to remember any of this. “I know you tell me I need to learn when to shut up, but I’m just going to keep talking, okay?”

So Keith clung to Lance’s voice while he talked about Earth, and his family. How he missed them. How he loved them. And when his voice slipped into the first few notes of a song, something Lance said always made him feel better when he was feeling homesick—that was when Keith felt it.

The catch in his lungs.

The emptiness. 

The desperation to breathe, except he couldn’t get any air, he couldn’t—

He couldn’t—

Lance’s voice was soothing, in his ear. It was calm.

Keith wasn’t alone, when he died.

\- - -

“I’ve got you. Don’t worry. I’ve got you.”

Keith wasn’t alone when he woke, either, or when he immediately rolled and threw up over the side of the medbay cot he’d been laid out on.

While he was dead. While he revived. While he came back.

He’d made Lance come and find his corpse, again. At least Lance hadn’t been alone, either, this time. Because Keith remembered—and it was a little jumbled, because his head had been hit so hard the memories themselves were bruised—but he remembered every minute of it. Dying.

“Breathe for me, Keith. Just like—here. Mimic me.” His hands were placed against soft cloth, a chest, and when Keith’s fingers twitched he didn’t feel old gloves and a hard, unforgiving ground. Just gentle pressure from another set of hands, and the steady rise and fall of someone breathing normally. 

“There you go. See?” Lance asked, and when Keith finally glanced up toward him, Lance’s expression seemed to falter a little. “So . . . hey. Hi. I asked everyone else to give you a minute, when you woke up. Because you hadn’t wanted them to see most of this. Also, I figured it was my right by now to make some decisions for you, as the official retriever of Keith. I should get a medal.”

Because Keith’s final request while dying had been to keep as much of this as possible from the other Paladins. There had been nothing Keith could do about it, after he’d passed away. But Lance had acted on his behalf. He’d kept out even _Shiro_ , who was probably pissed. His brother had constantly been pestering him to be careful after his last death.

“Thank you,” Keith said. _Thank you for keeping the others away so they didn’t need to see me like this. Thank you for finding me._ When he realized his hands were still pressed against Lance’s chest, he pulled them away. That familiar ache was back in his bones, running along his limbs. But he could wriggle his toes again. Everything seemed to be in place, intact. Alive.

“You’re alright?” Keith asked Lance, and he scowled when Lance immediately laughed.

“You literally just resurrected from the dead and you’re asking me if I’m alright? Wow, Keith. You’re really going to have to try a lot harder after this to pretend you don’t care about the rest of us,” Lance said, throwing a mock punch toward Keith’s arm.

Keith caught it, and the two of them wrestled for a moment before he realized Lance could probably, actually beat him for once, so—

“Oh, God! You nasty alien!” Lance flinched backward before Keith could lick his arm.

“I win.” Keith settled back on the cot with a self-satisfied smirk.

“What—you—no. That wasn’t even a thing you could win,” Lance protested.

“But if it had been, then I would have. Because I did,” Keith said, folding his arms across his chest.

Lance sat down in the chair he’d had propped up near Keith’s cot, so hard the legs skid a little against the floor. They sat in a silence that wasn’t exactly terrible, but . . . Keith had gotten a little better at communicating, since he’d realized he actually had friends.

“It helped a lot, when you were talking about your family,” Keith said, clearing his throat. He couldn’t quite look at Lance, because he realized he’d never asked his friends much about their lives. Only took what information they gave to him freely. Maybe it was because when he’d grown up, he knew anything personal about the other kids in the homes was a subject better left untouched. But the Paladins didn’t seem to work that way. Lance didn’t. “Do you think I could, uh, learn more about them?”

Lance’s smile was enough to make all of Keith’s aching bones feel hot and uncomfortable and _happy_ instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who would have thought that for someone as inclined to fight as Keith, I'd make so many of his deaths... unrelated to the actual battles they're fighting? Boy is just unlucky.
> 
> Bit of an update: I'm currently working from home, which hypothetically means more time to write. However, if you've noticed, the length of the chapters keeps . . . growing. Now that we've hit the Keith/Lance stretch, there'll be a bit more substance to the chapters rather than just the death scenes (I'd originally planned to keep the other bits vaguer, but I hope you all enjoy those scenes too??). That is to say, hopefully the next 3 chapters will come sooner than they would have otherwise, but might still be at 2 week intervals depending on how much Content I throw in there.
> 
> Let me know what you thought of this chapter! What unfortunate death do you think might come for Keith next?
> 
> Find me over on [tumblr](http://imreadingabook.tumblr.com)!


	7. Morgue

“I have a theory,” Pidge said while Keith rubbed his arm. Coran had drawn some blood from Keith for the Altean and Pidge to mess around with, something Keith really didn’t want any part in. Ever since Pidge had found out the Blades weren’t sure why most Galra lived several lives, she acted like she’d undertaken a solemn oath to find out the cause. For science. It didn’t matter that Kolivan and the others simply accepted their numerous lives as fact because there wasn’t time to question why the universe had given them that privilege. 

“It is that it’s a genetic thing? Because that kind of seems like a given, Pidge,” Keith said tiredly. Usually, he liked spending time with her. Compared to the others, Pidge was easy. She was content to let Keith quietly sit with her while she tinkered with some experiment and rattled off stats about robots or the Lions or the Galra that he half-comprehended. When they were together, Pidge never lectured Keith about training too much, and he never told her she needed to get more sleep. “No offense.”

“No. Duh.” Pidge hopped onto one of the other cots in the medbay. Not the one they’d deemed Keith’s—the one they’d laid his corpse out on more than once. No one wanted to touch his literal death bed, so Keith always had his own space reserved in the medbay. “I have a theory that _all_ the death stuff is genetic.”

Keith shook his head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know. Evolution. The Galra developed this ability to live more than once because it was most beneficial to them,” Pidge said. “I’m thinking maybe it became a thing because Galra are predisposed to dying more often than other creatures.”

When Keith narrowed his eyes, Pidge only looked like she wanted to flick his arm. So she was serious, then.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Keith said. “Dying is—it’s random. Galra can’t be more likely to die from freak accidents, or . . .”

Or any other way that he’d died.

Pidge’s eyebrow quirked. “Uh-huh. Just like giant mechanical lions can’t defend the universe. Just like how there can’t possibly be a multi-verse. Just like—”

“I get it. I think. Nothing seems believable until there’s something there to prove otherwise. Seeing is believing,” Keith deadpanned, before he conceded, “Not for you.”

“Of course not. I don’t need to see something to know that there’s evidence to support my theory,” Pidge said. She hesitated, then swung her leg out far enough to nudge his knee with the toe of her boot. “There are plenty of people on Earth who believe in fate and luck. I’m just saying maybe Galra have _really_ bad luck.”

The stiff, starched medbay sheets rubbed uncomfortably against his palms as Keith sat back and tried to think without letting his thoughts get too carried away. Apart from his moments with Coran and Pidge in the medbay, Keith tried his best to forget about his having multiple lives. Remembering felt like there was a weight crushing his chest, or water in his lungs, or any combination of horrific things that he didn’t want to talk about.

“Dying six times in less than two decades does seem a little improbable,” he admitted after a moment.

Bad luck Keith.

Maybe it’d been luck or fate or genetics that set his house on fire. That brought him to terrible foster families. That made him feel lonely and broken and scared enough to destroy himself.

Maybe Keith was the reason his father was dead. Maybe his father would have been alive if Keith hadn’t been around.

“Keith.” Pidge nudged him again, boot taps growing more incessant until he leaned forward enough to shove her away. “I know you’re usually busy doing your loner thing, and everyone always freaks out at you after you . . . die. But I thought maybe it would help if—well, if I could prove to them you aren’t doing it on purpose. Because you _aren’t_ doing it on purpose.”

Well, twice. Twice it had been on purpose, and only once for very good reasons.

“I know you aren’t,” Pidge said. “All of them do, too. They’re just terrible at processing their emotions when it comes to death.”

“Thanks, Pidge,” Keith said. Maybe. Maybe. It was enough for him to think about, enough to knot the worry that seemed to constantly sit in his stomach. _That_ alarmed him, because it felt familiar. Like a version of himself that should have been long gone, left behind in childhood. The Keith ready to explode at any moment—rough, volatile, dangerous. The kind other kids avoided and adults blamed when anything went wrong.

“Now if I could just—”

“No more tests,” Keith decided, planting his foot against one of the legs of her bed and shoving until her cot rolled away, Pidge shrieking indignantly.

\- - -

It felt like coals warming his heart. Adrenaline trapped in his veins. Lines of heat poured through him, coiled in his muscles, waiting. Watching.

“Don’t let yourself get distracted, mullet!” Lance laughed when a swipe of his bayard came within a few inches of striking Keith, who barely managed to dodge out of the way. “Give me a challenge before I kick your ass!”

It made Keith grind his teeth. It made him strike a second later than usual, because he needed to rein himself in, remind himself this was Lance and they were training and on the castleship, and safe. They were safe. _He_ was safe. Lance needed to work on his close-range combat skills, especially because his bayard was still reluctant whenever he transformed it into a sword.

They’d been practicing, Lance and Keith. Keith and Lance. Target practice for Keith. Sparring, for Lance.

Lance’s next strike was close enough to ruffle Keith’s hair; the other Paladin cackled.

“Dude, keep it up and I won’t even need to call you mullet anymore,” Lance said, ducking out of Keith’s range as if threatening a bayard-style haircut was hilarious. Keith’s hand tightened on his bayard, his sword, his weapon—tightened on that _anger_ waiting for him just below the surface. “Guess we know who the better Paladin is after all—”

They didn’t usually fight dirty in the training room. Shiro and Allura didn’t allow it.

The Blades didn’t care; the enemy certainly didn’t. 

With a _mildly_ underhanded move, Keith knocked Lance’s feet from under him, slamming his lanky body to the ground. His bayard clattered away, so Keith threw his aside as well. His gut churned and acid burned in his limbs but he could still be fair.

“What the—”

Lance rolled as soon as Keith grabbed for him and they struggled, and—and Lance had gotten a lot stronger, since they’d last done this. Maybe they’d both matured, because Keith couldn’t remember the last time they’d really taken their emotions out on one another through all-out fighting. Clearly, they hadn’t matured _enough_ to get Keith past . . . this. Whatever it was.

“What are you _doing_?” Lance huffed when he had a moment to breathe. “Keith, you ignorant fu—”

“Shut up,” Keith ground out around his teeth, and the words—his mouth—felt a little sharper. Like anger bled into his voice, his skin. Like his frustration wrapped around his canines. “Just shut _up_ , Lance, you never stop talking—”

“Yeah, well, one of us has to acknowledge who’s winning—”

For a moment, Lance triumphed, and held Keith pinned to the ground. For a moment, it felt like _something jutted from Keith’s back and he couldn’t move, he couldn’t feel his legs, he could barely shift his fingers_ until Keith realized he _could_ move his legs and kicked to . . . fight dirty, again.

“Why does it always have to be a competition with you?” Keith grunted. For a moment they pulled apart, eyeing one other like something dangerous sat between them. “We’re training to work better as a _team_ , Lance.”

“Uh, we already are a team, Keith,” Lance said, pressing his lips together before he shook his head. “You’re the one going all crazy Galra—”

They went back at it, struggling, fighting, losing, winning—too breathless to argue.

“I am _not_ a crazy Galra,” Keith insisted, when they were both bruised and exhausted and sprawled a relatively safe few feet away from each other on the training room floor. Any minute now, Coran or Shiro would check the monitors, send someone in there to make sure they wouldn’t end up destroying themselves when they were supposed to be training.

“Your eyes went all glowy,” Lance said, waving a hand in front of his face. God, it already sounded like he could get up and fight again. Keith was so _tired_. “How do you do that?”

“I don’t know, Lance,” Keith snapped. It was odd, having the anger seep into him when his limbs were rebelling, refusing to allow him to try to take out his frustrations on Lance. He didn’t want to fight Lance. It was never really about fighting Lance, anyway, and Keith thought both of them knew that. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You never want to talk about it,” Lance said. His gaze had drifted to the ceiling, and that was easier for Keith. It felt like less of a challenge, talking without looking. “You pretend like that part of you doesn’t even exist. You never talk about being with the Blades. You never even mention your mom! Don’t you want to—”

“No!” Keith clenched his teeth together—sharp, so sharp behind his lips—and swallowed hard before continuing. “No. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I thought you were beginning to understand this whole thing people do when they’re connecting with each other,” Lance said. “Like, I tell you about my family, maybe you could tell me about yours. Or at least tell me embarrassing stories about Shiro! Anything, Keith. I’m dying over here.”

It wasn’t heat, then. It was ice. Sharp and chilled and powerful, spiking through his heart.

“You aren’t dying, Lance, okay? Stop exaggerating.” With a frustrated huff, Keith pushed himself to his feet. “No one here is dying.”

“Well—”

“Don’t say it.”

“Except for—”

“Lance.”

“This isn’t easy for me either, you know!” Lance had gone to pick up his bayard. He looked like he didn’t know whether to throw it, or challenge Keith again. Instead he piled it with his other things. He was leaving, of course—Keith had been so irritable lately he’d even driven Shiro away to _give him some space_. “We can’t exactly afford to bring on a goddamn space therapist. I don’t even know why I try to get through your—your thick skull, you asshole. You’re so stupid sometimes for a guy who’s so smart.”

Keith could only stare, and wait, as ice crept through his veins. It was only fair. It _was_ stupid, to be ruled by your emotions and your past. Shiro and Kolivan would be disappointed.

“I’m leaving before I beam a shoe at your head,” Lance said, before he stormed out of the training room.

\- - -

A few months passed, and they weren’t very good to him. The time passing reminded Keith too much of the Garrison. Those months reminded him of who he’d been before he asked for help.

And Lance . . .

Lance wasn’t very good, either.

Sometimes he went hours without saying a word. Sometimes Keith found him pacing the halls at night, when he was supposed to be sleeping—when they both were. Sometimes Lance spent too many hours in the training room, until Allura or Shiro needed to drag him out, telling him to relax.

It used to only be Keith who pushed too far past his limitations. That was how he knew something was wrong.

Well, that and the fact that Lance had practically spelled it out for him in so many words. Either because Lance assumed Keith wouldn’t figure out a fellow Paladin’s emotions on his own, or because Lance thought Keith already knew and didn’t care.

That was wrong. The thing of it was Keith cared too much.

Because he’d done it again. He’d broken his promise. He’d died, and Lance was a little fucked up because of it, and that was all on Keith.

Things were a little better after Keith apologized. When he _tried_. The exact words that made up an apology never passed from his lips.

But the castle’s cooling system broke one day, so Keith told Lance the temperature reminded him a little of home. Lance tried making breakfast one morning, so he told Lance the safety tips his father had drilled into him that were most useful around open flames. After a ridiculously eventful supply run, Keith told Lance one of the scarves the other Paladin had brought back as a souvenir was the exact shade of Krolia’s skin.

He _tried_. 

He knew Lance tried, too. Spending hours with Coran or Hunk, hidden away somewhere, leaving with tears on his cheeks and a weight lifted off his shoulders. Subtly suggesting that maybe Keith could talk to someone, too. If he wanted. If it would help.

Keith didn’t need to speak to anyone; he was _trying_.

They worked together, and sparred and battled and fought.

There were so many things to fight; they were so close to ending this war. But Voltron was exhausted, and Keith was tired; nothing seemed strong enough to make him forget his exhaustion.

That’s what caused his mistake.

They were on a planet already under Galra control, trying to free citizens and destroy deadly tech that had been developed there with the intent of crushing the rebellion and Voltron. There were always new weapons being created, new threats to disassemble.

The planet’s base was better guarded than they’d imagined. It took longer than they’d anticipated to get inside. The lost time sapped at their strength, lowered their defenses, and meant nothing good was likely to happen. Usually, Keith lived for fighting against the odds. But there was still that burn in his chest and the ice, threatening his veins. He didn’t really know what he wanted, or what he was supposed to do.

His teammates, his friends were shouting in his ear.

Shiro and Hunk had locked down the command center. Allura was with Pidge in the armory, hacking the base’s advanced weaponry to pieces—both literally and electronically. Coran was above, providing as much air support as possible while Galra fled into the skies.

That left Lance and Keith, together. Rivals. Partners. Lance kept back, shooting so precise that Keith—Keith, who usually slept with a light on, sometimes felt like his bed was collapsing beneath him, preferred to be as prickly as the knives he carried—had no problem turning his back to Lance’s gun, and letting his friend shoot around him.

_Trust_. That’s what it was. No matter how viciously they fought each other, that trust remained unbroken.

They cut down at least a dozen sentries together, leaving them bent and sparking in their wake. Pushing in farther, they were in uncharted territory. There was a reason this base was well-guarded, beyond the weaponry. If they could get far enough, before the Galra were able to destroy whatever they were trying to hide, it could turn the war even further in Voltron’s favor. They were so close to having peace.

Then there was a noise behind Keith, sort of like a gasp, mingling too close to a sigh. He turned in time to see Lance fall— _no, not Lance, he wasn’t supposed to_ —hitting the metal floor bonelessly. The hilt of a knife winked purple in his chest.

It wasn’t that Keith didn’t react, when the druid flickered into visibility beside the fallen Paladin. It was like his thoughts were stuck, as broken as Lance’s rasping breaths.

_No. Not Lance. It was always supposed to be_ him.

“Too easy,” a voice drawled, ancient and withered and indifferent. Motion flickered nearby and Keith reacted before he knew what was happening, knocking a knife—another knife, a blade intended for him—away with a swing of his bayard.

Then the druids descended. 

They fought too calmly; like they’d already won. And Keith was desperate, all sharp teeth and growls, quick footwork and stabbing blades. Whenever a druid was within reach, they vanished. His sword sliced through air like his enemies were only so much colored dust on the wind. And Lance—he needed to get closer to Lance.

They were leading him _away_. There were too many between him and Lance, and—and he couldn’t see if the other Paladin was breathing anymore.

“Leave the blue one,” that rattling voice crawled down Keith’s spine. “He’s useless. Weak. The red—yes—"

Keith howled when the first druid struck him. He burned as they overwhelmed him and froze when it mattered most, sword knocked away as he was forced to the ground.

“You’ll never—”

He wasn’t quite sure what he planned to say, but Keith didn’t get to say it. Something struck his head and the world went quiet.

\- - -

“The half-breed awakens.”

Keith knew he hadn’t died because his head hurt, like little needles were jammed against his skull. Somewhere in the time he’d lost he’d been moved; there was chilled metal beneath him and a spotlight blinding him overhead. Surprisingly bright and white, like lights on Earth. But around it, on the fringes, he saw the purple.

Three lives left, still, and he’d been taken. It could have been worse.

Keith’s stomach lurched, before he remembered. It _was_ worse. Lance. They’d left Lance there and hadn’t taken him too, because . . .

Keith’s thoughts stammered because he refused to finish them.

No. The others knew where he and Lance had gone. That was why their armor could be tracked. Coran had been in the castleship, could have prepped a healing pod immediately.

One little blade couldn’t overwhelm a Paladin.

Keith managed to lift his head, enough to look down at himself. Weapons, gone. Armor, missing. He hoped they kept it stored somewhere nearby. Pidge would find him. They just needed time to look after Lance first. Just enough time to save him.

Shivering in his black bodysuit, Keith tried to pick out the forms crowding the table—yes, it was definitely a table he was laid out on—in the bright lights.

“The half-breed appears to be averse to the current temperature.”

Lunging, Keith only made it upward a few inches before something snapped him back with a harsh _yank_. Feeling the sting of metal cuffs around his wrists, ankles, and neck was no match for the ferocity of his frustration.

He just . . . needed to kill them. 

He needed to hurt the druids for what they’d done.

That instinct was what Keith hated most about himself. It was what he thought made him too much like the Galra he fought.

“Where the fuck am I?” Keith demanded, pulling again on his wrists. The restraints allowed a little give, just enough to give him broken pieces of hope that he might wriggle free. “You know my friends are coming for me, right? They’ll scatter you across this entire universe when they’re finished with you.”

“The half-breed seems to be experiencing emotion,” another voice said. Two—there were at least two of them hovering over him, blurred out by the bright lights. Staring, probably. Annoyingly, terrifyingly clinical. “I am curious to see how this will evolve over the course of our procedures.”

“We’ll begin,” the first voice said, and they started.

It was difficult to say how it felt like falling apart and knitting together all at once. Because Keith felt like curling in on himself, protecting what might have been the best parts of him, as his physical body could do nothing to stop them. It felt like loss, because there were pieces of him they were taking and Keith wasn’t sure they’d ever return.

The druids were curious, and clinical, and started with his eyes.

They knew precisely what they were doing as they mapped out the curiosities of _Keith_. Rarely was there a chance to study a human and here he’d presented the opportunity to poke at one crossed with the Galra. Gave them a chance to see if the _half-breed_ was useful. He pieced as much together from their conversations overhead; they didn’t speak to him as if he could respond.

Their magic healed him the first, second, tenth time they took his vision away. Sharp blades cut as deep as their indifference—hovering over him, muddled by distance and those bright, blinding lights.

Well, blinding until the pain and cutting and pain and pain and—

Blinding until he could no longer see.

They always put him back together again, at the end of what Keith was forced to consider a day. They’d heal him and it’d burn, and the fire inside him would quench for a few minutes. Long enough for them to trundle his table into a cell, cuffs unlocking only when he was firmly enclosed behind a door that refused to open for him. The space was dank, small, and cold. There was hardly any light, just enough purple seeping in through the cracks in the doorway for him to see the food they always left for him. That he had to assume wouldn’t poison him.

They only left the table in there, for him to sleep on.

Each morning he fought them, until bones crunched and blood boiled and Keith was slammed against freezing metal. Again. And again. And again.

The more days that passed, the harder it was for Keith to pretend he’d overpower them, eventually. There really wasn’t very much to eat; his energy was fading as much as the rest of him.

The druids methodically moved downward. When they were finished with his mouth—and for a few of those days, curiously, his mouth felt too full, too sharp—it seemed like they tired of working around his screams. They muzzled him, after that.

Another wonderful thing to look forward to each morning.

Time was tricky. It stuck in places, making hours seem to stretch to last longer than his entire existence had on earth. Then Keith would blink and realize he’d _lost_ something. He’d be on the table unable to see anything but white edged in purple as the druids cut and propped, then roll over—realize he could roll over—to find himself in his cell.

The in-between parts were beginning to escape him. In the little free time he had between exhausted sleep and shoveling rations in his face, when he wasn’t paralyzed by pain, Keith decided to worry about how his mind was starting to fail him. The chance to escape could come and go because the version of Keith who’d recognize the opportunity for what it was wouldn’t be . . . there.

Keith tried the mental exercises Allura had coached them through, in case of emergency. In case they were taken.

He tried the methods Shiro had whispered about, that had gotten him through his own captivity.

He tried remembering the Paladins would be there, soon. They were his friends; they would find him.

The druids pressed on; they didn’t hurry. One morning, they cut off one of Keith’s fingers and seemed disappointed when it didn’t grow back, annoyed they needed to waste magic on fixing it themselves. They yanked off nails. They prodded and cut and sliced. They ignored the way he involuntarily pulled against his restraints, how the muzzle left harsh lines against his face every night because it pulled against his cheeks when he tried to scream.

When they moved to his chest, they weren’t careful.

_Something_ nicked and Keith gasped—tried to gasp, teeth grinding. Pain was constant, familiar, but something new rushed through his body. Panic he hadn’t seen since the first few days.

_What’s happening?_

His chest heaved and the druids’ hands stilled, which was never exactly a good sign. It meant they were observing.

_Why can’t I breathe?_

“The half-breed is distressed,” one said and for a moment, a fleeting flash, fire reignited in Keith’s veins. He wanted to tear and bite and destroy, to show the druids that he—that he wasn’t weak.

_I can’t—_

“I suggest we move up test 27-K3.”

“Agreed.”

The voices were moving away.

The voices—

_They’re letting me die._

Keith didn’t want to die, but the universe never liked to give him what he wanted. There was part of him that didn’t want to live with the pain anymore anyway, the piece that kept forgetting the in-between, burrowed deep. Curled around the unbroken pieces of him hidden deep where the druids couldn’t reach.

_They’re—_

_They don’t—_

_They don’t care._

_I’m—_

Keith died quietly, because the muzzle strapped around his mouth didn’t allow him to scream.

\- - -

Everything was calm. Still. Keith didn’t want to wake up.

_Five more minutes._

He’d never been one to sleep late, even as a kid. His father had joked that he’d need to put a bell on Keith in case he decided to go wandering at night.

Right then, though, exhaustion rattled him. He wanted to sink beneath the thick comfort of unconsciousness, to ride out this wave of peace.

“Test 27-K3 is successful.”

_No_.

It hurt, like shifting mountains and calming storms. It felt like he’d lost something, when Keith opened his eyes.

“The half-breed lives,” the druid said. “I do wonder how many lives it has left, but it would be imprudent to test its capabilities until the rest of our queries are resolved.”

“Agreed.”

_No_. White light tinged with purple. Hooded figures staring down. Chilled metal pressing against his skin. 

There weren’t . . . blue eyes, _kind_ eyes waiting to greet him. A strong arm around his shoulders keeping him upright. Soft words coaxing him back from wherever death left him while his body was deciding to revive again. Keith usually ached everywhere after he came back.

This hurt was different.

He’d been so _stupid_. A fool. Keith couldn’t even blame most of it on his upbringing, because he knew Shiro would have helped him, if Keith had even bothered to mention that he was having issues with . . . emotions. Said he wanted to figure out why he and Lance were always shouting and fighting like every conversation they had was volatile, every exchange of words hitting heavy like the fate of the universe weighed down each syllable. And in the moments where they were calm, everything went softer. Like Lance could see right down through him into the parts Keith didn’t really want to show anyone.

Lance wasn’t there when he woke up, and even though Keith knew he shouldn’t have expected anything else, the realization cracked something inside his chest.

He lost a lot of time, then. Partly because of his indifference; Keith had scoured the cell and the cuffs and table, he’d attacked the druids with every fighting style he knew bare-handed, and still had no solid escape plan. The druids’ experiments seemed to rush forward, and he didn’t know if that was because of time betraying him or if they were really, truly worried about something.

Days passed. It hurt to try getting off of the table, when they left him in his cell.

They talked more hurriedly overhead. The lights burned brighter.

Keith drifted, and time pulled alongside him, until one day orange lit bright against the white and purple. The sound hit him a moment later—an explosion. Both druids jerked away from him; they hadn’t been so bad, that day. There’d only been a little blood, on his leg. He’d stopped thinking about what would happen to him after they were finished with his feet and had nothing left to examine.

There was more sound—noise Keith couldn’t place, because he couldn’t move his head much with the restraint clamped around his throat. His throat burned, but no noise escaped his lips. The muzzle was tight, and maybe it would have hurt if he hadn’t had so many other things to complain about.

The white light clicked off. Everything went quiet. Something knocked against the metal near Keith, behind him, but it didn’t matter because he couldn’t move and he’d gotten very good at losing time whenever the druids were near the table. He barely felt them tugging on the metal harshly secured around his wrists.

Until he felt the restraints release. The muzzle was next to go, discarded when it no longer dug into his skin. The pressure keeping him pressed firm against the table was suddenly no longer there, as purple edged into his vision.

_Purple_.

Keith panicked. There was enough left in him to know he needed calm, to conserve what little reserves of energy he had left to try to do something. Anything. Even if the druids killed him again for it, if they decided they didn’t need him for anything else—it would be worth it. One last chance to break free.

His leg shot out, foot catching one of the figures with a satisfying _smack_ , but there wasn’t enough strength behind the shot especially without his boots. Scrambling to get his arms beneath him, he rolled off the table—out of reach—and collapsed to the floor so thoroughly he barely managed to keep from bashing his head against it. Right. He’d forgotten about all of the blood loss.

That wasn’t quite right. Keith couldn’t forget, but it was easier not to remember.

It made sense to him.

They were coming closer again, and when one tried to catch his arm, Keith got in a few satisfied jabs that left the druid hissing. They were trying to still his feet—trying to keep him from getting up—and the purple glow was closer, flickering, fading, so behind it he could see concern and a familiar scar—

Keith hesitated. Someone ducked through his guard and pressed their hands against his face, blocking out most of the room.

“You’re safe.” Maybe Keith _had_ hit his head, because his sight faltered, and the things he could see made absolutely no sense. Black spots darted in his line of vision, growing. Creeping in and threatening to overwhelm everything else. It took him a moment to realize the world had gone still. Blood dripped from Keith’s leg steadily, quietly. “That’s it. We found you. We’re here to take you home.”

It was—it had to be a trick. The druids hadn’t tried anything like this before, but maybe they’d gotten bored of slicing into him physically. Maybe they wanted to see how his mind could hold up against them.

Against blue eyes, that hadn’t been there when he’d revived this time.

Keith tried to say something, but it’d been so long since he’d managed any words that it felt like he’d forgotten how to find them.

“There you are. I knew you’d come back,” Lance said, patting Keith’s cheek once before his hands slipped away. Keith’s face felt oddly hot, and chilled, in the absence. “Just hang on a little bit longer and we’ll have you home in no time. Alright?”

Keith found himself nodding in agreement, gaze shifting only when Lance glanced over his shoulder.

“Shiro, do you think you could—”

_Shiro_. Oh. He’d kicked Shiro. But his brother didn’t seem too angry, when he knelt by Keith’s side and lifted him from the ground.

The sudden shift made Keith’s vision stutter, until there was nothing left for him to see at all.

\- - -

Keith paced one of the upper observation decks. His strength had come back relatively quickly, after a long stint in one of the healing pods. Coran said he was impressed. Shiro said he needed to take it easy. Keith still felt weak.

He didn’t remember anything of the rescue, after they left the druids’ lab.

His next memory was tumbling from the healing pod, caught in Shiro’s arms.

It felt odd, waking inside the castleship after healing normally—as normal as things got, in space—instead of waking half-dead. Popping out of a healing pod instead of opening his eyes on a medbay cot.

A shudder worked its way down his spine. Keith paced faster.

It had been days and Keith really didn’t want to talk about it. He knew Shiro was keeping the others’ questions at bay, because he’d been there from the start assuring Keith that he only needed to speak about what would make him feel better. What he thought would help.

More than anything, Keith hated knowing Shiro could understand the roiling anger in his gut, the frustration mixed with _shame_ , because he never wanted Shiro to feel that way. He didn’t deserve it.

Keith—maybe Keith deserved it. He should have been able to get himself out. Should have been stronger, shouldn’t have been weak and afraid, terrified the druids would slowly chip away all the time he had left.

Two. He had two lives left. More than any human, though it still didn’t feel like enough. Not if he still needed to save the universe.

His hands wouldn’t stop shaking. How could he possibly fight like—like _this_?

It felt like the stars loomed through the viewscreen, pressing down, imposing, pressuring him. Keith needed to pull himself together. He needed to be strong.

Maybe if he just trained harder, but Shiro and Allura had conspired against him to lock him out of the training deck, and set the mice to spy on him whenever it seemed like he was being . . .

Erratic. Like Keith was a child who couldn’t be trusted to take care of himself.

And he could, if only he could train to make himself _stronger_.

“Hey, mullet.” Lance. Of course it was Lance, ridiculous slippers barely making a sound against the floor as he walked over, yawning wide. “I thought I’d find you here.”

“The mice went to get you, didn’t they?” Keith asked dryly. Annoyingly, the little things had stopped being afraid of him. They liked to try assuming the same pose Allura held whenever Keith was doing something he shouldn’t, hands on hips as they chattered like they were telling him off.

“How I got here isn’t really that important, is it?” Lance asked airily, waving away any concerns. Rather than pace alongside Keith, he sat cross-legged on the floor. His bathrobe was going to get dusty, and he’d never be ready for alarms, lounging in those old Altean pajamas. “You should be asleep.”

“I was asleep,” Keith insisted. That was true. He went to his room every night and pretended he wasn’t afraid he’d wake up to find himself locked inside. Sleeping with his knife under his pillow as usual, shoes on just in case. The problem seemed to be the part of his brain that usually let him skip the in-between moments, when he’d been with the druids. That piece of him seemed to wake up in his dreams. “Can you open the training deck for me?”

“Uh, no. First of all, Shiro and Allura would absolutely destroy me for doing that, and they’re both a lot scarier than you. Second, I was planning on getting back to sleep at some point tonight, and I can’t do that if I have to be all alert and worried about you,” Lance huffed.

“I didn’t—”

“Don’t say something stupid like how you never asked for anyone to worry about you,” Lance said. “Where has your head been the last few years? Hi, my name is Lance. I care about you.”

Keith’s pacing stilled.

“I mean, we all do.”

Right. Reluctantly, Keith went to sit beside Lance. It didn’t seem like he was going to get any more time to moodily be by himself anyway. 

“I don’t want to talk about any of it,” Keith said immediately. It felt like he should have had hackles raised, teeth bared. On edge.

“I know,” Lance said earnestly. “Literally anytime you want to, though, I’m available. But I just—we, we just—we want you to know we’re here for you.”

Keith knew that, and part of him reveled in it while a lot of him hated it. He liked having friends. He hated wondering if that made him weak.

Lance was quiet, an unusual thing, and they sat together looking out at the stars. Maybe the universe wasn’t so bad; there were pieces of it left that held no expectations of Keith. Parts that weren’t waiting for him to save them. There was peace out there, elsewhere.

“They took one,” Keith said after a while, when he wasn’t sure this hadn’t been Lance’s plan all along. Sit there and wait and eventually, Keith will open up. Maybe, but Keith wasn’t sure it would have worked with anyone else. Shiro already had too much to deal with. So did Allura. Hunk would be afraid. Coran would hover. Pidge didn’t need to hear any of this.

Lance was listening.

“Just one. At first it started out as an accident, but they let it happen. They wanted to see what would happen to me,” Keith said. The stars didn’t burn as bright as those white lights.

“I’m sorry,” Lance said, and then he shook his head. “I thought maybe I’d regret it—that we killed those druids who had you. But I think they deserved it. You shouldn’t have had to go through that.”

Keith shrugged heavily. “It was only once. I still have two left.”

Lance’s lips thinned, and because he looked like he was on the verge of lecturing Keith to care more about his past deaths, Keith’s heart lurched.

“It wasn’t that bad,” Keith admitted. “Well, it was. The whole . . . dying. I’m not saying that was okay.”

It felt like dying with the druids forced all of his deaths to catch up with him. Another reason why Keith couldn’t sleep. He’d wake with smoke in his lungs and water clogging his throat. Crushing weight on his back and explosions ripping him to pieces.

Keith hated dying.

“The dying didn’t matter as much as waking up without having you there.” That was it. That was what Keith had realized, that made him weak.

He felt Lance looking at him, the gentle pressure of an assessing gaze, but Keith refused to glance away from the viewscreen. Part of him wanted to punt himself out of an airlock, but then Red would just find him and he’d have wasted another life.

But he couldn’t help himself, gaze sliding sideways, when he heard the soft hush of fabric slipping over metal. Lance shifted across the floor, closer to him. Keith was still, like he didn’t want to startle Lance away, when the other Paladin pressed close to his side, resting his head on Keith’s shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! I did say the chapters were turning out longer and longer, oops. There was a lot going on in this one; I hope you all enjoyed!
> 
> Only two lives left for poor Keith and a whole universe left to save :(
> 
> Is it mean that it took me seven chapters just to find an excuse to have Lance caress Keith's face and snuggle with him under the stars?
> 
> I hope you're all doing okay (as okay as possible!) under current circumstances. Stay healthy and safe <3
> 
> Find me over on [tumblr](http://imreadingabook.tumblr.com)!


	8. Memorial

It felt like throwing himself into flames that warmed him from the inside. It felt like diving into a cold pool and swimming down into the depths. It felt like freedom and exhilaration and light, and it terrified Keith.

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” Keith admitted after Shiro pulled him aside because Keith had destroyed one too many training gladiators and the others were beginning to get worried about his renewed volatility. It seemed like the more he told the others not to worry, the more they did the exact opposite.

Friends. They were exhausting.

Being trapped in space with the person he considered to be his older brother . . . even more exhausting, because Shiro was great at most things and _terrible_ when it came to relationships.

“Have you tried, you know, talking to him?” Shiro asked. The first time Keith had willingly brought up his _problem_ , he’d stormed out of the room before Shiro could actually say anything. His brother had been smiling too wide, trying to ruffle Keith’s hair, too proud and teasing and—too much, when Keith wasn’t really sure that he wanted . . . any of this.

Well, he did. He _wanted_ it, the—the whole thing, the talking and closeness, trailing lips and pointed looks, late nights and darkness and secrets and—and gentleness, and trust.

He hated that he wanted it so badly, because that made him feel weak. But it hadn’t changed anything; the feelings were getting _worse_.

“I’m not sitting around talking about my emotions!” Keith protested.

“So you’re going to waste time sitting around pining instead?” Shiro asked, raising an eyebrow. “Why would you do that to yourself? Keith, we’re in the middle of a dangerous war that’s overtaken most of the known universe. You shouldn’t prevent yourself from getting what happiness you can while you have the chance.”

But when had Keith _earned_ that? Yes, he’d saved some people, with Voltron and running missions with the Blades in his spare time. Yes, he was on the right side, trying to do the right thing. Still, much of his life had proved Keith didn’t deserve much. Not a functional family—not even a good foster home. Not the Garrison, because those years had been cut short, too. He’d even lost Shiro several times.

It didn’t matter to Keith that he was the one who kept dying. What mattered were the things he lost in-between those lives ending; what mattered was being _terrified_ whenever he wanted something, because it would probably be taken away.

“Hey.” Shiro prodded him on the arm, pulling Keith away from his thoughts. His brother was always good at knowing when Keith was busy drowning in himself. “I’ll be first to admit that it isn’t easy to recognize what to do with those emotions, and you’ve had it harder than most when it comes to opening up to others. I don’t care if I need to remind you every day that you deserve some good in your life. You deserve to let yourself be happy.”

Sighing through his nose, Keith offered Shiro the smallest nod. His brother was annoying; he was exactly the kind of person Keith had always imagined a brother was supposed to be. “Fine. I’ll work on it.”

“Good,” Shiro said, before his smile shifted into more of a smirk, and Keith smothered a groan. “Because I’m pretty sure that once you actually _talk to him_ , you’ll have someone more than willing to help you, uh . . . figure things out.”

Shiro’s smirk deepened, and Keith hit his arm before he could elaborate on what _figuring things out_ would involve.

\- - -

“You think he’ll—you think this will be okay?” Keith tugged at the high collar of the shirt Coran had stuffed him into. All of this had taken quite a bit of encouraging—and all of it felt highly blown out of proportion. But Keith . . . was the one who’d decided to ask for more advice. Because that had felt easier, in the moment, than going to Lance . . . than going up to Lance and . . . and . . .

_Talking_.

He was going to do that, anyway. He had to. It felt inevitable, a collision, a black hole pulling him in and it was nice, and warm, and safe, and he didn’t even want to fight it anymore.

But this had allowed him to procrastinate.

Because Keith knew what he wanted—knew it nearly every moment of the day, knew it in his bones, knew it when he saw _him_ —but that almost made things worse. Keith didn’t do well with vulnerability; he preferred to punch things whenever his emotions welled up, and up, and spilled over—

It had taken him a long time to realize that was why he and Lance were always fighting so much.

“Okay?” Coran repeated, eyebrows drawn downward as if being second-guessed was one of the more devastating things that could happen to him. But Keith was the one itching in half-dusty red and white Altean formalwear. 

“Why, this is the proper way of courtship!” Coran said and Keith wanted to die, again. “You look smarter than a two-nosed—”

“Coran, I believe Keith is simply nervous,” Allura said, because she’d been pulled into this, too. Coran hadn’t been able to track down some piece of the infernal costume he’d decided Keith _must_ wear, which meant Allura had learned everything, which meant she was _beaming_ at Keith in a way that might have been nice under literally any other circumstances. “Just remember to smile and—oh, I don’t recall what else you humans usually do with this sort of thing.”

“That’s why we’re here to help!” Hunk said from a few feet away, because he’d said he needed to keep his distance or he’d end up crying happy tears all over Keith’s fancy outfit. Hunk was incredibly, bafflingly, excited and before he’d gotten to know Hunk, Keith hadn’t really understood that so many different emotions could make a person cry. 

“Keith, you know Lance will just be happy that you put in the effort,” Pidge said. “Just be yourself. Maybe a little less grumpy than usual. Then Lance will, you know, take it from there.”

Hunk and Pidge had, of course, been roped in when Allura burst in on them playing a game together and had demanded assistance in unlocking a hardly-used closet where the essential costume piece had been located.

And now they were all staring at Keith.

Shiro, possibly the most oblivious older sibling in the known universe, was unaware any of this was happening, off on the training deck where Keith belatedly wished he could be, too.

But he’d put this off for too long.

This—this wasn’t something normal people procrastinated about. 

They didn’t shove away their chances at happiness.

“You’re ready,” Coran decided, slinging an arm around Keith’s shoulders so that he needed to follow the advisor out of the room or else risk tripping both of them. When they reached the hall, Coran leaned closer. “Don’t worry, my boy. I’ve temporarily redirected some of the castle’s cameras so you’ll have a bit of privacy.”

Even though his red and white outfit itched, even if he felt ridiculous, something warmed like relief in Keith’s chest. That was why he’d come to Coran in the first place.

“Thank you, Coran,” Keith said, staggering off after Coran slapped him on the back a few times.

Keith’s hands were full.

Lance sat alone in the lounge.

“I was wondering where everyone went off to,” Lance said, smiling before he even turned and saw him. “Oh, hey. Keith. What are you—”

There was that moment, that little burst of time that kept happening whenever he saw Lance—that kept Keith up at night, that was distracting him in training, that had driven him to Shiro and Coran and the others. There was a second where Lance’s eyes softened as soon as he realized it was Keith standing there. He stood, and when he licked his lips Keith felt like falling apart.

“What’s happening?” Lance asked, standing. “Is there a diplomatic thing no one told me about?”

His ocean eyes took in the outfit—too tight, and Keith wondered again why he’d let Coran talk him into it—and the flowers in Keith’s hands. There were from a nearby planet; after a recent mission, Lance had paused by the bright yellow blooms, running his fingers over the petals. He’d talked so much about how beautiful they’d been, and Keith had agreed, and Keith hadn’t been looking at the flowers.

When he swallowed, his mouth felt as dry as if he’d been at home in the desert.

“No,” Keith said. “That’s not it. I—here.”

He thrust the flowers forward so abruptly he nearly smacked Lance in the chest with them. That softness around Lance’s eyes hardened; Keith was already doing this all wrong.

“They’re for you,” Keith said belatedly, clasping his hands behind his back as soon as Lance took the flowers away.

“Oh. Did someone . . . send them to us?” Lance asked, looking slightly baffled. Peering downward, his face framed by yellow petals, he looked . . . Keith found it hard to breathe.

“No. I sent them,” Keith said. “I mean, I got them. Earlier. Myself. I got them for you.”

The confusion was only getting worse. Keith could see that, felt helpless to stop the spread.

“You know it isn’t my birthday or anything right?”

At least the person Keith currently wanted to punch was himself.

“Yeah, I know that.” He knew that. He knew a lot about Lance, because they talked beneath the stars and after late nights training and over bowls of food goo in the kitchen. Keith knew because there had never been anyone else he’d wanted to listen to more. Those conversations had spun far past familial stories and birthdays and small details. He’d learned Lance’s hopes, his fears, his dreams. “Lance, I . . .”

“Yeah?” Lowering the flowers, Lance waited. He looked so much more serious than he usually did. This was the face Lance made whenever Keith tried talking to him about the past, about how he’d never really felt comfortable trying to plan for a future. About what that meant now, with Voltron and the Blades and Krolia.

Lance listened.

Lance was chewing on his lip.

“I like you,” Keith said, forgetting all the complicated wording Coran had tried to teach him, whatever was customary in an Altean courtship. 

“Uh, I like you too?” Lance replied tentatively, slowly shaking his head when Keith _vehemently_ shook his.

“No, I—I’ve never done this before. I know you do all the—the flirting, and whatever the f—I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now,” Keith said. He was glad his hands were behind his back, because otherwise he’d be wringing them. “To find the words to explain . . .”

“I know,” Lance said, and for a moment it seemed like he did. Like the edges of a smirk were hidden by his cheeks. “You’ve always been better with actions than words.”

Right.

_Right_.

Keith’s heart felt like it was going to beat right through that old Altean clothing when he stepped forward. When he released his grip on his own hands, so he could lift one and trace his fingertips along Lance’s jaw.

When Keith leaned forward and kissed Lance, it felt simultaneously like he was dying and like he’d never been alive before that moment.

His lips—Lance’s lips, the ones Keith had been kept awake over—were soft like he’d imagined. They were parted in surprise, and then there was that _smirk_ when Keith pulled away. And stepped backward. Maybe he’d overstepped—maybe Lance would start shouting, and—

“Mullet,” Lance said, and he laughed with every part of himself when Keith immediately frowned. “I _never_ thought you were going to pick up the hints I was dropping. I mean, how many guys do you think I take moonlit strolls with? Why do you think I kept _falling asleep next to you_?”

Oh. After that first time, when Lance had fallen asleep on his shoulder, it had happened a lot more often. But Keith had assumed that was only because they were spending more time together. 

Which was because . . . Lance also liked him.

_Oh._

No wonder Hunk and Pidge had been acting so strange all day, whenever Keith wanted them to assure him this wasn’t a completely ridiculous, useless, stupid idea. Maybe everyone else on the ship had recognized Lance’s actions before Keith.

“Keith,” Lance said, and excitement bubbled beneath his skin. “You got all dressed up for me? You bought me flowers?”

“The outfit was Coran’s idea.”

“You got an outfit from Coran, for me?” Lance nearly vibrated happiness. “Oh, I’m getting pictures of this—”

“No, you aren’t. No one is! This was a stupid idea,” Keith grumbled, but Lance looked so _happy_ , and it was getting hard to keep the frown on his face.

“ _Was_ it a stupid idea, if it worked?” Lance asked innocently. “Come here.”

“No.” Keith crossed his arms over his chest, feeling a few stitches pop near his shoulders.

“Keith,” Lance whined. “Come here.”

Well.

Keith stepped forward and Lance did, too, and their lips met again as yellow petals dropped around their feet. Then the entire bundle of flowers fell, as Lance’s hands found Keith’s waist and Keith’s fingers tried to map Lance’s skin, and they were together, and they were happy.

\- - -

It continued, and the happiness grew, until Keith felt like his heart would burst of it, but it didn’t, and he lived, and they were _happy_.

Lance and Keith. Keith and Lance. Still competing, still fighting, but more often than not if Keith snapped and Lance reciprocated, they’d end up tangled together, distracted by lips and hands and skin until neither could remember what they’d wanted to argue about.

The fighting didn’t matter. What mattered was the first time Lance came to stay in Keith’s room all night after his homesickness woke him with nightmares. What mattered was Keith calling Krolia on his vidscreen, and failing to hide his smile under her prying questions, then having his mother immediately call Lance to discuss his _intentions_ while Keith raced to Lance’s room, trying to intercept the chat. What mattered were moments spent with the Paladins and Alteans, all crowded in the lounge, with Lance tucked under his arm and none of them thinking anything more of it. 

They slipped trinkets into each other’s rooms after each planet they visited. They picked up on their training, because it became increasingly more important to watch each other’s back. Before, Keith had always known he’d do anything to keep Lance or any of the others safe. They were his friends, his allies, his—his big, convoluted space family.

Thinking about the possibility of losing Lance now made Keith think he’d be destroyed by the loss, too. 

They snuck glasses of nunvil to see who could drink the most. They compared heights more often than was healthy. They found out that Keith liked getting flowers, too, after Lance handed him one on a particularly pretty planet and he realized he couldn’t stop flushing.

There were bad times, too. Of course there were. It was war.

Lance was too reckless, ending up in a healing pod over and over, Keith torn between protecting him and screaming in his face every time Lance stumbled out, whole again.

Failed negotiations that left Allura and Shiro and the rest of them irritable. Battles they needed to bow out of. Emergency signals coming from too many places at once—too much for Voltron to handle, even if they split up.

Sacrifices were made along the way. Blades Keith had known while he’d been training or out on his missions. Rebels. Friends.

The fight continued. It inched forward, and onward, and there were more scars for Keith and Lance to trace at night when they tried to walk each other through their nightmares, and then—

Then, it was over.

It wasn’t easy.

The Paladins nearly lost their lives—and that was the force of Keith’s nightmares, all of them dying and Keith, the only one who’d wake up, who’d live again—but they survived. They all survived. The world was completely changed, but Earth was still intact. Things like buildings and lives could be rebuilt, slowly.

The war ended.

Keith met the family Lance had told him so much about. When he’d been overwhelmed by all the people and overlapping voices, Lance had held onto his hand through it all—an anchor, a warm spot in the chaos. When he’d been overwhelmed _again_ , the time Lance’s mother took him aside and lectured him on all the terrible things she would do if Keith ever hurt her son, before she said the family would always be there for him too, Lance had held Keith’s shoulders. Held on and on even if he didn’t understand why Keith was shaking, why he seemed upset, when really he was happy and aching and _overwhelmed_. He loved Shiro and Krolia, but it felt like too much to allow himself to think he could have even _more_.

He loved . . .

Well.

Of course he loved Lance. It was impossible not to.

When the world had calmed, and Voltron had done all they could to help rebuild, Keith felt a restlessness in his bones that worried him. It was something he hadn’t felt for years, like he wasn’t quite where he belonged.

That was when he told Lance that he maybe wasn’t through with helping the universe. Keith wanted to join the humanitarian efforts the Blades had started, because he couldn’t stop _thinking_. There were people out there who’d lost everything to the Galra—homes, family, livelihoods. He couldn’t forget how empty his stomach had always been, growing up. How lonely he’d been after he’d been after the Garrison expelled him. Lost.

And Lance hadn’t hesitated to say he’d join Keith up in space.

\- - -

“You were the Red Paladin, weren’t you?” _Were_. The past tense made it such a final thing. Red, then Black, then Red again, and some part of Keith would always be Red even if no one saw the Lions again for a long, long time. Sometimes when Keith was missing Red—felt like something was missing in him—Lance would press closer and they’d be quiet, together. Lance was always good at knowing what he needed.

His _boyfriend_. His boyfriend was always good at knowing.

“Yeah. I was.” Keith turned to look down at the alien—several feet shorter, with quite a few more appendages. This planet had been particularly ravaged by the war; once, it’d been filled with the kind of resources an army had been willing to kill for. “Can I help you with something?”

It was an honest question, even if the question came out rough around the edges. Keith was continuously working on what Lance called his _people_ skills and, apparently, he was improving. Sometimes he’d catch Lance’s eye across a room and realize that he was already smiling, the gesture almost feeling foreign on his face. Lance had helped Keith find a lot of things to smile about. They needed more to rely on than just each other. Shiro had been the first one to point that out, and Keith had agreed, for once.

Lance paused where he’d been unloading boxes a few feet away, stretching his arms. He made a Blade uniform look _really_ good.

“No, I don’t think so,” the alien said. It was difficult to tell, because their face already looked sort of melted, but it seemed like they were frowning. “You’re half-Galra?”

Keith nodded. Every planet they visited, at least a few people would ask him about that. They’d seen the broadcasts Earth was sending out, connecting with the rest of the universe so they could all try to heal together. They knew what the Blades were, though there were other members like Lance now—others who weren’t Galra at all, who just wanted to help.

It would take time, to fix things. There were still so many places in the universe the Blades weren’t welcome, just because of what the rest of their kind had done.

“Would you prefer to have someone else help you, then?” Keith asked, sounding as tired as he felt. There was a flame flickering in him, that threatened to burn higher, because he wanted to argue. He wanted this alien to spit out every bad thing he’d have to say about the Galra, so then Keith could counter it, and—and fighting them never worked. It only seemed to prove to the people standing against him that he deserved to be feared. Hated.

“I think so,” the alien said, gaze shifting past Keith. Lance had walked closer—casually, cockily, but Lance was always trying to diffuse situations through sheer, staggering confidence. “You two are . . .?”

Right. If the alien had seen the feeds from Earth, they’d know . . . well.

He and Lance hadn’t exactly kept their affection for one another a secret, and Earth’s tabloids had a field day with that. Two Paladins, _together_? It gave people something to talk about other than what they’d all lost, so Keith tried not to mind.

“Yep,” Lance said, squeezing an arm around Keith’s shoulders before stepping toward the alien, peering behind him toward his home. “What is it you need? Some food, supplies? If something’s broken, we have plenty of people capable of taking a look. My boyfriend, you know, is one of the more capable people we have. Says a lot about you that you don’t even want him to help.”

Careful. They had to be careful, or this alien would go spouting off to his friends about how the former Paladins had been _mean_ , how Galra were still _cruel_ , and it burned Keith inside that he just needed to stand there. To take it.

“I need . . .” The alien thought for a moment, appendages wavering. “I need my family back.”

“Wha—” Lance stepped backward, when the alien surged forward.

“The Galra took everything from me. I don’t need your _food_ ,” the alien sneered. “I just want one of you to know what it feels like. To have someone you love taken away so suddenly.”

And the alien shifted, or those things that looked like his arms did. And there was a blade. A knife. Wicked and sharp and long, it’d been hidden somewhere in the alien’s clothing, and—

And Keith didn’t carry his blade with him often, anymore. Because they were meant to be there peacefully. It didn’t mean there was never danger, but—but people had enough trouble trusting an unarmed Galra, so he’d believed he could always fight his way out. He’d kept up with his training, and Lance had gotten better at hand-to-hand.

But.

The knife.

Lance was quick, surging backward, but the alien kept coming. Backup was too far away; their weapons were on the ship, and the other Blades were spread out near the other houses. Lance was already stammering into his comms, Keith had drawn up his fists.

There wasn’t time to think.

This wasn’t something that was supposed to happen, after a war was won. They were supposed to be safe.

Diving, Keith wrapped his arms around Lance’s long legs, bringing him down. It was inelegant; they ended up in an inconvenient heap. Tangled. Slowing him down.

_Come on, come on. Get on your feet._

Keith pretended it was Shiro instead his head, pushing him on, getting him upright.

Lance’s eyes widened as soon as Keith found his footing.

“Keith—”

There was a shadow stretched over the ground, over Lance. A shadow with something sharp raised.

There were footsteps, in the distance. People running toward them.

Shifting, pulling up a fist, Keith didn’t move more than a few inches before something knocked into the side of his head.

At first, it didn’t hurt and at first, he didn’t realize he’d fallen onto the ground.

Keith couldn’t feel anything and then he felt too much, all at once. Pain, trickling pain, an inferno burning near his scalp and _there was something wrong with his head_.

He thought he felt something by his hand.

He couldn’t see. Couldn’t hear.

Nothingness.

Then Keith died.

\- - -

“And Mama promised to make you dinner once we get back. She won’t stop talking about how much you liked her cooking, and she wants you to . . . They all want you to . . . To feel . . .” There was a deep sigh, not far from Keith’s head. 

Skin mostly numb, Keith still felt when something wet fell onto his cheek.

He twitched.

“Keith?”

Numb, but something heavy draped over him, and for a moment Keith wanted to panic like he still did sometimes, when he felt like he was pinned down. Trapped by debris. Imprisoned by druids. Gagging, choking, drowning underwater. But this weight registered as nice, as good, after a long moment where Keith thought his heart might beat right out of his chest.

Maybe Lance could feel it, he was hugging Keith so tightly, because in the next moments he was saying, “It’s alright—I’m right here—” and his voice hitched so oddly that Keith realized Lance had been crying.

Crying over him.

“Are you—” His voice sounded raspy, broken, and Lance squeezed him tighter.

“If you ask me if I’m okay I think I’m going to—going to—” Lance broke off into Spanish, which Keith didn’t mind because it sort of proved his boyfriend was okay.

Well, as okay as he could be. Circumstances, and all.

Keith cleared his throat when it seemed like Lance wasn’t going to stop ranting. “So. I died again.”

His memories smudged, running into and over each other like oversaturated watercolor. There’d been the mission. Not really a mission. They’d been helping people and that alien had been so angry, not even the first to want to hurt Keith because he was part Galra.

The first that’d tried to hurt Lance because of it, though.

Keith would have died a thousand times, would use his last life as well, to make sure Lance was safe.

“Did something else happen?” Keith asked, because Lance was only just then sitting up, scrubbing a hand under his nose. Maybe—maybe he hadn’t been okay, or maybe someone else had been hurt. Keith lurched upward, trying to sit, and ended up tucked beneath Lance’s arm when he started to list to the side.

“It’s been a while since we’ve done this,” Lance said with a humorless laugh. So unlike Lance that it hurt Keith to hear it. Years had passed, since he’d last died. Maybe more time than he’d ever had gaping between his lives before. “You’re always a little wobbly when you come back. No falling over.”

Leaning against Lance, who smelled like he’d sweated through a mission and then kept vigil by Keith’s side for maybe a few days afterward, Keith glanced downward. He’d woken on another cot, another infirmary. It felt weird, to miss the Castleship so suddenly. Keith’s deathbed. Although he couldn’t necessarily say he’d _liked_ waking from death so many times in the same position, it had been . . . oddly comforting, to always be in the same place. This sterile room on a repurposed Blades ship was still eons better than where he’d woken up, last time.

His wrists ached, his mouth ached, but—but he pressed himself a little closer to Lance, reminding himself he wasn’t back _there_. That the druids were no longer a problem.

“You were crying,” Keith pointed out bluntly, and he waited, because sometimes he knew that even though Lance talked a lot, he needed time to figure out the right words.

“Of course I was crying,” Lance said. “You were stabbed in the fucking head and I have healthy ways of expressing my emotions.”

That explained why his head had hurt so much, and why it hadn’t taken long to die. That was good; Keith hated the deaths that took a while.

“He was going to kill you,” Keith said. “I knew I should have brought my blade with me.”

Even as a child, after the drowning, he’d never gone around so unprepared. _Especially_ with Lance right there, Keith should have been ready to defend him. But . . . it was partially because of Lance, that Keith had learned to sometimes leave his weapons behind. Because Lance saw the good in people, all the ways they could be built up and not torn apart.

Keith didn’t trust a lot, but he trusted Lance, and knew the universe couldn’t get by on violence if it was going to become a better place for everyone.

Still, that had been too close. Keith had been too trusting; too stupid.

“I should have gotten out of the way,” Lance said. “I—I—”

Glancing sideways, Keith saw some of the pain he thought might have filled Lance’s eyes while Keith had been . . . gone.

“We’re heading back to Earth. I asked them to set the coordinates as soon as we pulled you on board.” Lance said. “Keith, I wasn’t . . . I wasn’t sure if we’d counted right.”

Long nights spent telling Lance everything, things only Shiro had known. Things Keith wanted to protect, to guard, to hide, and Lance was so patient, waiting to hear him out when he was ready to speak.

The fire. The drowning. And then he told Lance, the thing he’d never tell Shiro.

How he’d killed himself, and regretted it, and hadn’t realized it had worked before Shiro found him.

The explosion. Falling. The collapse. The druids.

Sometimes, Lance had asked if Keith was sure.

Had there been another battle where he’d been injured? Any strange days where he’d missed several hours, a huge black pit in his memory where a death might have occurred? Had any missions with the Blades gone wrong, or maybe something happened to him when he was young, when his father had still been around?

_I don’t know_ , Keith had always thought. There was always some uncertainty, with his memory, his genetics. Not all Galra got nine lives.

“Lance.” Keith didn’t know what to say, because even if he was getting better with emotions . . . There was absolutely nothing that could make this _fine_. Take back the hours Lance had spent sitting next to his boyfriend not knowing if they’d miscounted and he’d never wake up.

“I’m here,” Keith said, and somehow they’d shifted so it was Keith propping up Lance instead. The infirmary was quiet apart from the buzz of machinery and Lance’s breath calming, slowing. “We counted right. I’m here, and . . . I’m sorry for doing that to you, _again_.”

Lance’s elbow found Keith’s side and he didn’t think it was accidental. _Right_. Now wasn’t the time to apologize, but . . . he felt like he needed to make it up to Lance. Keith wasn’t supposed to have Lance crying over him every few years. Lance deserved better; he deserved more.

“Now we’re even,” Lance muttered into his shirt. “One life left for each of us.”

“Yeah,” Keith agreed, though his lips twisted a little. Gently, carefully, he lifted Lance’s chin so he could see his face. Those eyes so blue they could encompass worlds. “One life left. I’ll spend it making this up to you. Every moment, making you happy. I promise.”

“You—” Lance squinted, something like alarm and then surprise and then a sly sort of teasing filled his expression. “Your—your whole—”

Keith frowned, wondering what Lance was fixated on.

“Your whole life?” Lance asked.

“Yeah, of course,” Keith said, wondering what was so strange about that. Of course, he’d spend every day doing that—

But that would mean they’d be together, for the—

The rest of their lives.

_Oh._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone is doing well, staying safe and healthy <3
> 
> Again, this took longer than anticipated! It's been a very busy month, but I hope you all enjoy the chapter :D Maybe it was a good decision to save possibly the fluffiest death chapter for near the end. Did I just skip over the entire end of the series to give Keith a few extra years before he died again? Yes. The boy earned it!
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who commented on the last chapter!!!! I read and cherish every comment--there are still a few I need to get to but honestly sometimes it takes me a while to reply because I'm overwhelmed by how kind ya'll are. Maybe I'm like Keith that way. :D Thanks for being my Lances and putting up with the delay!
> 
> One chapter and one life left. How do you think it'll all end??
> 
> Find me over on [tumblr](http://imreadingabook.tumblr.com)!


	9. RIP

The tide pulled at his ankles slowly, softly, like it reminded Keith to breathe. Like the water wanted to reassure him he wasn’t alone. Warmth puddled around his shoulders as the sun continued to set; the end of another brilliant day.

He was there because of Lance.

Most things he’d done throughout the years were because of Lance. Some were for himself, sure; he’d gotten closer to Krolia. He’d tried making friends with members of the Blade and people at the Garrison. He’d picked up _hobbies_ , of all things, except Lance had continuously reminded Keith that sharpening knives and tuning up vaguely dangerous vehicles weren’t exactly normal pastimes. 

Yeah, Keith had done all of that to make himself happy. Because Lance had his family, and his friends, and his own hobbies—he’d only been able to convince Keith to join him in doing facemasks once. They couldn’t really solely on one another.

But without Lance, Keith wasn’t sure he would have even . . . tried.

It was Lance who’d constantly teased him about how Keith’s last life belonged to _him_. That Lance was taking this responsibility very seriously, and how—how Keith’s little slip-up in the infirmary wouldn’t _quite_ be enough, if they really were going to spend the rest of Lance’s first life and Keith’s last together.

It didn’t happen for months because Keith was uncertain and overthought everything to the point where he nearly called all of the former Paladins back together again to ask for advice, just like he’d done in the beginning.

But that wouldn’t have felt right. 

Lance liked big gestures, but this—that moment—it’d felt like it’d belonged only to them.

So Keith had waited, and he’d bought a shiny ring on an odd little outpost on the wrong side of an asteroid belt, one he thought Lance would like. Waited until the dust settled after his last death and things were a little more stable. A little happier.

Keith had never imagined he could be so happy. It felt like his veins might burst from it, like positive emotion had been a foreign entity for so long his body might just shut down.

Lance was worth it all and more.

They went to the water, of course. A private beach where it was only the two of them leaving meandering footprints in the sand and chasing the waves. Lance had thought something was wrong because Keith was too quiet. 

“Quieter than when you were always grumpy Keith,” Lance said.

Then when the time came and Keith got down on one knee and _immediately forgot how to say any word in any language_ , Lance had laughed and the noise was made of such sheer delight that Keith smiled. He stammered through something, and couldn’t remember or refused to ever tell anyone else what those words for Lance had been, before Lance nodded.

There was no hesitation.

Keith’s heart swooped—and then swooped again when Lance practically tackled him into the sand excitement, arms around Keith’s neck, lips crashing against his. They nearly lost the ring in the sand, ending up covered in it and salt water while they searched for it around their feet. Laughing too much to really be angry.

Because they still fought. Of course they still fought. They both had too much Red in them, for anything less.

There were so many things to fight over, when you spent years together.

Their life wasn’t perfect but it was _theirs_.

They fought over how Keith couldn’t settle, even when it seemed like the universe no longer needed them so urgently. A few weeks in the same place and he’d start to feel an itch beneath his skin, tightening and smothering until he needed to _move_ and run and _do_ something. They fought over his recklessness, his _restlessness_ , how not even Lance was enough to make Keith content. Nothing Keith said could convince Lance otherwise when they got like that, because Keith didn’t understand why he was the way he was, himself.

Maybe because he was finally, surprisingly, happy. 

Like his body was going into shock, and the only resolution it saw was to force him to do something to fuck it all up. Call up a Blade connection to see if they had any leads, something Keith could do. Sit by an old police scanner like some goddamn cliched vigilante. Leave in the middle of the night to just _walk_ and pace through miles of darkness so Lance would wake up _alone_ and not know what the hell had happened to Keith. Where he’d gone.

Sometimes Lance’s enormous family made Keith feel claustrophobic. Sometimes Lance was too outgoing, so Keith wanted to shrivel up inside himself—to run, again, it all came back to that need to run from something. Sometimes Lance was the one coming back, sheepish, apologizing after he’d ignited Keith’s anger through some misstep or sour word or hurt. Lance, uncomfortable around stiff, formal Blades. Hating the isolation Keith craved.

They always found their way back to each other in the end. Lance and Keith, Keith and Lance. It was like they were inevitable.

\- - -

“Stop pacing, Keith.”

He didn’t really register the words, because there were more important things on his mind. Like grand entrances and awkward smiles and how tight his collar was, pinching his neck so tight Keith thought he’d either suffocate or end up doing something stupid like tear off the suit.

“Keith. _Keith_.”

His feet stilled involuntarily, because it wasn’t often that he could ignore Shiro.

“Is this because I wouldn’t let you wear that jacket?” Shiro asked, waiting until Keith lifted his eyes to give him a wry smile.

“Lance would have thought it was funny,” Keith muttered, and to his surprise Shiro considered that for a moment before he seemed to agree. Keith would have been fine in his red jacket and jeans, but the outfit wasn’t for him.

“Probably. But this is practically the only day where you’re supposed to dress a little less like . . .” Shiro paused and Keith decided he really didn’t want whatever words were going to come out of his brother’s mouth next.

“Me. Yeah, I get it,” Keith said, shoving his hands in his pockets. But he wasn’t supposed to do that, because his pants were going to get all wrinkled, and the sad excuse for a jacket he _was_ wearing didn’t have useful pockets at all.

At least he hadn’t let Lance talk him into a tux.

Shiro had seemed surprised Keith was willing enough to cave for _this_ , the suit and everything, but it was . . . Lance. He deserved the best.

And because it was their wedding, Keith supposed he deserved a little bit of the best, too.

When someone knocked on the door, Keith’s stomach did a little nauseating somersault. It was Krolia, which was exhilarating and disappointing all at once.

It made his heart race and then dip in a way that reminded him he’d lived this long and that Lance would revive him again just to kill Keith himself, if he ended up using his last life right before they were married.

“Keith.”

“Mom.”

They’d never really been great with words, the two of them, and after spending so long trapped on a space whale forcing them to share memories there’d _really_ been no need for superfluous conversation between them.

No longer fighting for their lives somehow gave Keith and Krolia less to talk about, and so much more. 

Shiro looked a little lost, like he felt the need to fill in the silence, but Keith could read Krolia’s expression. Her eyes. The way her stare said _I’m so proud_ and _If Lance ever breaks your heart, I’ll break him in half_.

It was wonderful.

“It’s time,” Krolia said, lips lifting in the smile Keith had been waiting for. “If you’re ready.”

Of course Keith was ready. Of course they’d coordinated with Allura to tell Lance the ceremony was meant to start half an hour before they’d told anyone else to arrive, because _he_ was the one who needed time to prepare. Even if Keith knew Lance looked good in any light. Half-asleep or exhausted, cheek still pressed with the lines of his pillowcase.

Sometimes they fought about that, but Keith didn’t really mind, especially not when it meant Lance usually ended up smelling like something refreshing and bitable, or emerged looking like . . . Like . . . 

On a typical day, Lance looked like sunshine in the rain.

When Keith waited with Shiro’s hand on his shoulder, staring down Lance’s assorted family and Krolia and their friends, with Coran crying off to the side—when Lance’s _grand entrance_ began because of course he’d demanded nothing less and Keith couldn’t ever seem to deny him—their eyes met at opposite ends of an aisle.

Lance looked like the perfect storm. Like the sun. Too bright, too bold—reckless and wonderful, dangerous and beautiful all bottled up into someone about to become Keith’s _husband_.

Keith had to glance away for a moment because his eyes wouldn’t stop burning.

\- - -

The first time they moved in together they were close enough for Lance to visit his family whenever he wanted and for Keith to head to the desert when he needed time alone. But things kept calling them away from Earth.

Work. Friends. 

They’d worked more cautiously with the Blades after Keith’s mishap during their outreach (he called it that, while Lance wanted to shake him for making so light of death). It was better when the Holts joined them. Or Shiro. Or Hunk or Allura or—

It was rare when they were all together, again. Yes, they’d all been at the wedding. They attended meetings for major alliances; they caught up whenever they could. What Keith liked best were the missions they could go out on, giving him direction—a sense of purpose.

It meant always moving on, moving forward. Moving in.

They bunked together on too many ships to count. They shared miniature homes on uncharted planets and slept beneath the stars on wilder ones. Even their home on Earth was hard to cling to when they spent so much time away. It felt like every time they returned, they needed to find a different one. Somewhere new; somewhere they could be restless together. Somewhere without dust in the corners.

Keith didn’t mind. Home had never really been a place for him and there were few things he owned he would hate to part with. Few enough that he could pack them and take them, and his husband, with him across the universe. He knew it was harder for Lance. Video calls weren’t the perfect substitute for being with family in person. Lance liked souvenirs, liked physical memories, so every time they left a place he looked back over his shoulder like he was leaving another piece of himself behind. 

It made Keith a little less restless because he wanted to preserve Lance’s smile and hold him close and make him happy.

It made Keith listen a little harder, whenever Lance looked at homes that were just a little too big for the two of them. The way he interacted with civilians on the planets they visited, always winning over their kids—swinging them around and letting them hang off him, laughing, always smiling. Watching as Lance spoiled first Shiro’s kids, and then Hunk’s, and . . . 

Keith knew.

Well, he thought he knew. They’d talked about it, a little. He still wasn’t very good on communicating, much less about _feelings_ , and it didn’t matter, all the years they’d spent together, because some situations still left Keith’s tongue heavy and useless.

He knew he wouldn’t be very good at . . . that.

Kids stared at him. They liked it when he offered to show them how to properly wield a weapon, but no one else seemed to approve of that. He didn’t understand why they were always crying and shouting and laughing and _living_ so loudly.

Maybe he’d learned too early to be quiet and was still trying to figure out if that was something that had always been part of who he was or if it’d emerged due to circumstance.

He knew he’d like the chance to be bad at it.

It felt like a secret, something he should feel guilty about because Lance didn’t talk about it often. Because Lance didn’t think there was anything to talk about.

So it started as an accident. Keith hadn’t meant to. Some part of him had always thought this would happen because of Lance— _to_ Lance—not to him.

Keith wasn’t made for gentle things.

\- - -

“Who is that?” Lance sounded exceptionally calm considering how much he stared.

Keith’s heart was doing odd acrobatics in his chest. Words died in his throat, heavy as the weight in his arms.

“What’s her name, Keith?” Lance’s voice was soothing, practical. Asking questions Keith should have been able to answer. “Who is she?”

There was no good answer. “I’ve been . . . waiting for her to tell me.”

Lance sighed, hand covering most of his face while he grumbled something that sounded suspiciously like _Not this again_. 

Keith extended his arms, but the child in his hands didn’t reach for Lance. That had been the problem, really. Keith had known this for what it was from the start. Knew this tiny creature who resembled a purple puffball more than something able to defend herself had had a life incredibly different from his. Even if her features were startlingly humanoid. Even if she was . . . like him.

Half one thing. Half another. Not quite belonging to either.

“No one was looking after her,” Keith said and he hated the defensive bite that crept into his voice. The child made an odd sort of rumble, but when Keith pulled her closer again—giving up, for the moment, on passing her off to Lance—she quieted again. “She just . . . didn’t want to be alone.”

It was hard to keep track of how many planets they’d visited. How many more they’d orbited or passed without landing. Keith was tired; he knew Lance was, too. This mission had dragged, but they’d been given good quarters here. Clean rooms. More living space than they knew what to do with.

The aftermath of war was complex and terrible and _terrifying_ , and . . . She hadn’t said anything, probably because she was too young to have the words for such a thing, but Keith had known the child no longer wanted to be alone. She knew what it was like to be _lonely_ , surrounded by people.

Keith stared down at her, jaw twitching as her eyes closed. He knew what it was like to spend too many nights wishing for change that would never come. Wishing for something if not _more_ , at least . . . different.

He knew Lance would understand but Keith had never really wanted to find the words to explain it.

“She likes you more,” Lance said. “I think I’m offended.”

Keith glanced upward, catching the edge of Lance’s smile. It eased something in Keith’s chest, a worry he hadn’t realized had rooted there hours earlier when he’d been out delivering supplies. First in the marketplace, then in the village, in the homes, at the school. But once they’d reached what served as an orphanage—

Keith’s grip tightened until the child rumbled again.

They’d apologized, his escorts. They’d seemed almost embarrassed that she’d reached out to him. Because of who she was, or _what_ he was? Keith didn’t think he’d ever know.

“It’s just borrowing,” Keith said. “I know—I mean, we could—there are places we . . . You know. It’s just for the night.”

The smile was still there, the light in Lance’s expression, but his eyebrows had lifted slightly. His expression hard for Keith to read. Then he was there, arm around Keith’s waist, other hand shifting Keith’s so he could get a better look at the child.

Her nose scrunched as she slept.

“Sure,” Lance said slowly, like he knew something Keith didn’t. “Just for the night.”

\- - -

Just as Keith had never known how to be a husband, he didn’t know how to be a father.

It’d been interesting, and weird, and horrible and nice and exhilarating. It’d done terrible things to his heart, when he’d woken after the first night and found Lance and the child laughing together over something shared.

When Lance named her, because unlike Keith he refused to call her ‘the kid’ for the next few years.

When things got complicated and slower, because there was someone new to think about.

Keith had been one for so long that it had been a difficult adjustment when there’d been two. And then there were three.

That gave him so many more things to worry about.

Keith had never really wanted to die—except, once, and that had been a mistake. He’d tried so hard to cling to life for Lance, too, because he’d died in front of him too many times and knew what it was like to be the person left behind.

That was why it was hard. Maybe why he was irritable and cross and irrational. Because he wanted to be like his father, and nothing like him at all, because he didn’t want to be the one who left.

It meant missing out on missions that were too dangerous. Giving things up so that he could make it to things he’d hardly seen before. Crowded holidays. Birthday parties. People getting together _just because they’d missed each other_.

He never regretted it. Not the odd, abrupt way they found their daughter. Not during sleepless nights and endless anxieties and hours spent cleaning up food goo flung across the floor.

Keith liked the softer moments.

Like when Lance yelled at him for letting their daughter play with his blade, vowing to never let him and Krolia watch her unsupervised again. 

Like when she started to walk, to run—a little too wild like Keith, extraordinarily charming like Lance. There were days when Keith felt less like he needed to fight against the world and more like he’d finally found . . . where he belonged.

Happiness had been a foreign concept for too long. It didn’t fit quite right at first, like a shrunken shirt he was struggling to pull on again after years apart. There had been so many glimpses of it, with Shiro, but so much of that time had been spent angry. Keith didn’t want that anymore. Not with a small pair of eyes taking in everything he did.

It grew harder to ignore the fact that there was a new generation ready to defend the universe. Every time Keith left home, he felt like his luck was running out. He remembered their theories, that Galra were only like this—like him—because they tended to die more easily. But he’d clung to life, _this_ life, for so many years that Keith was starting to think that he’d run through all those Galra lives and was left with . . . this. The human one.

Maybe his dad had left him with something good.

Keith’s restlessness hated it, slowing down, and he knew better than to tease Lance about the new lines, the streaks of grey that emerged over the years. It was shocking in that it was perfect because Keith had never imagined they’d get this far. Feel this happy. Succeed this much.

They ended up by the beach, because Lance and their daughter loved the ocean almost as much as Keith loved them.

Things were good. Even after Keith handed his daughter his blade and watched her leave with more than that, with half of his heart. Then they’d—they’d lost Shiro. And Keith lost his footing.

Lance had been there, was always there, a shoulder to prop Keith up—to keep him going. The light within him had always been enough to chase away the dark.

But they were growing old.

Humans only had one life.

\- - -

When Keith lost Lance it was worse than drowning or burning or suffocating or bleeding out, screaming, alone. It was _wrong_ because Keith was always the one who was supposed to die. The one supposed to go first. 

He knew Lance would have said something like _See? This is how I felt, all those times you left me._

He knew Lance would have made things right.

It was easy. Peaceful. Quiet. Lance didn’t wake up.

\- - -

The tide pulled at his ankles. Things felt . . . right. Keith knew it wouldn’t be very long, now.

He knew their daughter would be alright. Strong, too brave. Cocky. Smart, like Lance.

He didn’t have many people left and it was incredible enough that he’d had so many to lose at all. Curling his toes into the mud, Keith felt connected, grounded, safe. Alone, but not lonely.

“Yeah, I know,” Keith said to the tide. “I’ll see you soon, sharpshooter.”

\- - -

When it happened, Keith was asleep in his own home. There hadn’t been any fighting for him, not for a long while. There was no violence to it, no sudden jolt from one life to the next. Just a space of emptiness between breaths, and silence. Endless silence.

It was peace. It was all Keith had ever wanted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry it took so long for me to update with this last chapter! Thank you so much for all the kudos and comments--I read and cherish every comment and they're honestly the most motivating thing!
> 
> I've always known where this story was going but I was trying to find the right words, and I figured we all deserved some good fluff right now, so I hope you all enjoyed. Please let me know what you thought of the story! Did you expect this ending?
> 
> I hope you're all safe. I hope you're speaking up, speaking out, and looking out for one another. <3
> 
> It means so much to me, the support this story has been shown. I have an idea for a new story (this time tormenting Lance, I think) starting in a few weeks if you'd like to come along for that as well!
> 
> In the meantime, I can be found over on [tumblr](http://imreadingabook.tumblr.com)!

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO EVERYONE! I'm back! Hello again if you read my last fic which was my first on here. Nice to meet you if you're new! I'm back to tormenting Keith. This fic will be nine chapters long and should update every other Friday. Please pay attention to the tags; I'll keep updating them as we go along. Let me know what you think!
> 
> Find me over on [tumblr](http://imreadingabook.tumblr.com)!


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